Re: Need help with mime types & file associations

[Daniel Leidert <daniel leidert spam gmx net>]

Am Freitag, den 08.09.2006, 10:56 -0400 schrieb Joshua Smith:

[..]
> What I think I know:
> 
> A) I need to convince the desktop that files ending in .mesonjar are 
> mime type application/x-meson
Shared MIME-info Database
http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/latest/

If you want to support older GNOME systems (<= 2.4) too, then you need
to support the gnome-mime-data package too:
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-mime-data/

> B) I need to convince the desktop to open application/x-meson files 
> using my program

freedesktop.org Desktop Entry Specification
http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/

> I'm mostly focused on A, since B seems to be pretty well documented 
> (.desktop files seem to be the key), and I have to get A done before I 
> can start to think about getting B right.

A simple example for what you want are e.g. in planner or bluefish. Both
applications install their own entry to the shared-mime-info database
and their own .desktop files.

[..]
> There is a lot of conflicting documentation about how to put more mime 
> types into the system,

There were (and still are) different systems. But the fd.o spec is
already fulfilled by GNOME and ROX and it will be fulfilled by KDE 4
(AFAIK).

>  but nothing I try seems to have any effect.  I 
> think the system may have cached its conclusion that my .mesonjar files 
> are ZIPs someplace, but I cannot figure out how to clear/refresh that 
> cache.  (I found documentation of a command called 
> "update-desktop-database" but there is no such program on my test 
> system.)

This application is necessary to register, that your application can
handle the MIME-types specified in the .desktop file. It should be part
of desktop-file-utils or similar (which distribution do you use? "Apple
Mail" sounds like Mac?).

HTH and Regards, Daniel