Linux & application metadata

[Richard Gaskin]

Monte Goulding wrote:

>> AFAIK there is no standard UNIX way of binding files to applications-
>> this would be handled at the level of the "Window Manager", and there
>> are literally dozens of competing Window Managers for UNIX. The most
>> popular Linux and BSD ones being KDE and Gnome.
>> 
>> KDE does it with MIME types- other Window Managers probably also use
>> MIME types as well, but there is no standard file location or format
>> that I know of for this stuff.
> 
> I had a feeling it has something to do with MIME types. Ouch... just found
> this: http://www.gnome.org/learn/admin-guide/2.2/mimetypes-9.html
> 
> But wait! ... http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info-spec/
> looks better. Now where do these .desktop files go?
> 
> Now I see why I've never released any of my apps on Linux.

There's plenty of info on how to manually enter MIME info, but I'll be
darned if I'm going to ask my end-users to do something that silly.

Worse, it appears each of the window managers has a different scheme for
doing this, and I've seen no indication that it's occured to any of them to
standardize. :(

I hope I'm wrong.  

I have some things to deploy to Linux and just finding this basic info has
eaten more time than something this trivial deserves.  Once I find the magic
recipe for file associations, icon assignments, and putting an alias in the
Start menu, I'll post a summary of instructions at my Rev page.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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