Re: [Nautilus-list] Open with Other -- how does this work, anyway?

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Fri, 2001-11-02 at 00:39, Seth Nickell wrote:
> > Unfortunately, (1) Nautilus recognizes .lyx files as plain
> > text documents -- I presume because so does file(1) -- and (2)
> > since I upgraded to control-center-1.5.9-ximian.1 it's no longer
> > possible (as far as I can tell) to "configure which programs are
> > offered for which file types in the GNOME Control Center". (You'd
> > think this is what "Default Applications" would be, but it isn't.)
> 
> Get control-center-plus, which contains the file types applet in the
> advanced section. We are trying to figure out a way to make the
> interface much easier to use and hopefully it can migrate back into the
> "regular" section. Also, Nautilus should bring it up in Open With...

Ah -- I didn't know there was a control-center-plus. I now see that
Ximian has it in the Ximian Preview channel. (I get the feeling some
stuff was moved out of Preview and into the main Ximian GNOME before
it was really ready.) Thanks very much.

> In terms of finding this... I agree that the file types association
> feature could be more visible (rather than being buried within Open
> With). I drafted an interface for dealing with this, but I haven't had
> the time to polish it up.

Having it come up as part of Open With... isn't too bad... it's more
the specifics of the Open with Other dialog box and its interaction
with the control center.

> That would be a very hard interface problem. I think we operate off the
> assumption that if the user can deduce the magic byte tag for their
> type, they can add it to the configuration file themself :-) 

That seems reasonable. :) (I mean, I was willing to do it -- the
hard part was figuring out which configuration file to add it to.)

> I've added
> #LyX to the magic mime database for you, as well as LyX itself to the
> known applications list. Eventually we'll do a GnomeVFS release with
> this, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Thanks! Hey, just knowing it'll get there eventually is nice.

> > Nautilus (or any other part of the system) about that. Earlier,
> > I ran into the problem that StarOffice 6.0b .sxw files just look
> > like a ZIP archive to Nautilus -- and the same problem, I assume,
> > will arise with any other file format that uses ZIP or gzip or
> > tar+gzip as the last action in its save chain...
> 
> Yes. We've yelled and screamed and bitched at application developers to
> not use document types without magic byte tags, but to no avail. 

I guess it's the tension between two different kinds of interoperability
-- "Do I make this easy to identify, or do I make it easy to manipulate
with standard tools?"

> So
> we're looking at ways to cope with this. As Darin mentioned one approach
> is to allow one to specify the precedence given to magic typing vs.
> extensions. Another approach is to partially unzip files that are .gzs
> and detect the type of the internal file (but this has an associated
> performance penalty, and as you may guess we're loathe to slow Nautilus
> down further!).

Ick. :)

> > Anyway, for LyX and file(1), I suppose I can hack /usr/share/magic, 
> > but Joe Home User is going to want a better way. And what about mime
> > types? I know there's /etc/mailcap, but I also see I have files
> > in .gnome/mime-info that say "this file was autogenerated by
> > gnome-vfs-mime-info, DO NOT EDIT". I'm tempted, though, since
> > neither gnome-vfs nor gnome-vfs-extras seems to have any executable
> > files associated with it. Any ideas?
> 
> Look in /usr/share/application-registry and /usr/share/mime-info. Also
> note that GnomeVFS does not use /usr/share/magic. There's a
> gnome-vfs-magic file installed somewhere. It has a lot more entries than
> magic does on most systems.

Cool. I'll check those out.

--D