Re: Application roles

[Raffael Herzog]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 07:56:27 +0100 (CET), Peter Cooper 
<comrade@obverse.com.au> wrote:

> The modern Windows right-click approach offering an "open with..." option
> seems adequate for most users who are not willing to open command lines.

Well, GNUstep uses a different approach which is by far superior. I always 
keep three menus torn off which are placed around the FileViewer's main 
window: Inspectors, Views and History. Like this, it's a 
two-click/one-double-click thing to open a file with another application 
than the default:

1. Select the file
2. In the Inspectors menu, click Tools
3. Double-click the application's icon you'd like to open the file with

No need to copy broken UI concepts from Windoze.

> It seems clear to me that we are talking about a couple of different 
> kinds
> of things:
>
> 1. MIME type database

My first reaction to this is: GNUstep is the first environment where I 
actually use default applications. Why? Because I don't need to fiddle 
with that comlicated MIME-type stuff. With KDE, GNOME etc. I simply use 
the command line or the File->Open menu to open files -- just because it's 
by far too much work to setup default applications, in the end I'm faster 
like this.

OTOH, there's a valid point about MIME types: The internet. The internet 
uses MIME types extensively, so GNUstep should somehow honour this. My 
suggestion would be to add an extension to Info-gnustep.plist:

...
NSTypes = (
  {
    NSIcon = FileIcon_gif;
    NSName = "GIF Image";
    NSUnixExtensions = ( gif );
    GSMIMETypes = ({ "image/gif" = (gif); });
  }
);
...

Like this, make_services could build a MIME-to-GNUstep type mapping. The 
first entry in the MIME-to-GNUstep mapping could be used as default to be 
used if the file extension of the attachement/URL doesn't match any of the 
registered extensions for a specified type. E.g., if a gif image attached 
to a mail is called foo.image and the user wants to save it from GNUMail, 
offer to save it as foo.gif, because "gif" is the first listed extension 
for the MIME type image/gif. If the user wants to open it with the default 
application, simply determine the GNUstep type using the same method and 
open it with it's default application.

cu,
   Raffi

--
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no 
difference, but in practice, there is.

Raffael Herzog - herzog@raffael.ch - www.raffael.ch - ICQ #67961355