Re: proposal for MIME behavior in GNOME

[Lucian Gabor <luciangabor yahoo co uk>]

Hi,

Judging by the way I use Nautilus today I can see some problems. 

First one is that I have around 10 applications that could open an
text/html file. A few browsers, a few text editors, a few xml editors
and a few web development IDEs. Today I can choose one of each to be
part of the menu.
The other one is that I wont be able to select for a specific
file/folder a different double-click action. This problem might be very
subjective. I use this option for application folders (even if currently
(fedora 1/nautilus 2.4.0) it stopped working).
So, basically, the problems are that I wont be able to hide applications
from the context menu and wont be able to choose a default application
for a folder.

Without pretending that I have any kind of expertise I propose some
changes.

Following the usecase when the user select a default application for a
mime type, the list that presents them could have an checkbox that
signifies that it should by "highly visible". 
All "highly visible" items could be part of the main context menu which
would never have a child menu showing applications (like in the first
two mockups). 
When clicking on "Open with Other Application" it would appear a
dialogue with two tabs. One with the list and checkboxes and one with
the expanded view of the current "Run Application" dialogue.
The tab from the properties of a file would be similar and would select
the default application for that file.

Besides the above I am confused by one other thing. How are Nautilus
viewers handled? I do use them whenever possible because, with the
sidebar on, I can easily open that file with different applications.

One more thing. Particularly for images and movies it would be easier to
assign an application for all mime types from those categories. Maybe
extending the "Preferred Applications" dialogue? Text handlers are
already there.

Thanks for the time,
Lucian Gabor.

And the last thing: maybe this thread should be shared on nautilus list.

On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 00:18, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> I have written a proposal for handling MIME types and files better in
> nautilus at:
> 
>   http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/
> 
> In it, I describe some of the changes I'd like to make to make the user
> experience of opening files better.  If anyone has any suggestions for
> this, please follow up to this list.
> 
> The changes proposed are going to be made in gnome-vfs, nautilus,
> gnome-panel, and the control-center.  In particular, I'm planning on
> moving jhbuild over to the xdgmime branch of gnome-vfs as soon as I get
> it merged back with HEAD.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Jonathan
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