[Usability]Icon - Type - Applications association

[Haug Bürger <h buerger dokom net>]

Icon - Type - Applications association 

I use the new  mandrake 9 which uses Gnome 2.
I can not find an easy way to associate an
application with a file pattern with an icon 
in Nautilus.

I think the user should be able to set up
his own icons shown with any explorer like
application. Every icon should represent
a special file type matching a pattern, 
e.g. *.rpm, *.zip.
Each file type could be associated with many
applications which can handle it, one as default.

What we get is an 1 to 1 association between
an icon and a file type and a 1 to 1 association
between a file type and a pattern. Plus a one to 
many relation between the icon, file type, pattern 
and its applications.

The problem with the current MIME type system
is that there is a 1 to many relation between
a file type and a MIME type. How many MIME types 
are there for e.g. a *.gz file?

For me it is not clear which icon or pattern
is used for a gziped file, because there are 
multible MIME types for it. The current customizing
application is very complicated because it can
not display the associated types and applications
for a given pattern. It does not display which
is the default application for a given pattern
or which.

I hope i could clarify the problem i had which
may lead to a better solution, for me. :-)

Haug