Re: [Nautilus-list] script w/ mime handling

[Shane Mueller <smueller umich edu>]

Recently been a lot of discussion about mime-type handling for scripts
in Nautilus.

I would like to point out that this is already possible: the Open/Open
with... context menus are already mime-type based. I think scripts are
great, but they are kind of kludgy if they are relied upon too
frequently. 

My question is: why are people suggesting that Nautilus should add
functionality for mime-aware scripts, rather than just going to the
control center and adding their scripts to the mime-type they want?
What is wrong with the current "Open With..." menu and mime-handling
functionality that makes people willing to go to the Scripts menu, and
search through a long list of irrelevant script names or wade through
hierarchical menus?  Apparently, people feel that it is often easier to
use the scripts menu than to use the "Open With..." menus.  There are
several reasons why this might be so:

1) Ease of installation. Just copy file to folder and it works.

2) It is difficult to add/change/alter mime-type associations. Since the
mime-type database interface is file-type based, rather than
application-based, associating a single application with a bunch of file
types is difficult--and this is what is wanted. This database has two
primary dimensions (file-type and executable), but it is currently being
viewed as a tree, parsed by file-type.  The scripts menu allows you to
have an application that can be invoked through nautilus for ANY type of
file, which is often easier than going in and editing many or all
mime-types to include your application.

3) The "Open" menu option provides a very different metaphor for
thinking about what you can do to a file than "Scripts" does. I think
'Open' is more desktop-application based, while 'scripts' is more
file-processing based.  Maybe this needs to be rethought, relabeled, or
a more obvious way to add a script to the "Open" menu should be
developed. I think that most people who want mime-aware scripts just
haven't realized that a script can be made 'mime-aware' by adding it to
the "Open With..." menu. I myself didn't until today.

4) The "Open With" menu is disabled for multiple selections, even if
they are the same mime-type.

5) Nautilus provides some environment variables a script can use when it
is is executed.

I think that enabling mime-aware scripts will destroy some of the
advantages that people find by using the 'scripts' menu, because it
would require installers, editors, or a lack of transparency--creating
the same situation that lead to scripts being popular. On the other hand
they really won't necessarily make the current scheme much more usable,
because a 'mime-aware' scripts menu won't have the effect of
'presenting' the truely relevant scripts--it will only 'filter' the
irrelevant ones.  Many (maybe most) scripts are intended for ANY
mime-type (about 25 of 40 on my website*), so the scripts menu would
still be full of scripts that you don't currently want to use. It is a
little messy allowing a script to execute itself on a file it was never
intended to be used on, but you can always make a script only accept
certain mime types using the "file" command.

I think a better solution would be to make it easier to deal with
mime-type handling and the 'Open With..' menu. Maybe a few changes could
also be made to Nautilus to address issues 3-5 above, but much of the
asked-for functionality is in place already.  Its just sometimes a
little difficult to use.

* http://www-personal.umich.edu/~smueller/Nautilus-Scripts

Stm...
===================================================
  Shane Mueller                       East Hall 4424
  (734) 647-3698            Cognition and Perception
  smueller umich edu      The University of Michigan
       http://www-personal.umich.edu/~smueller
====================================================