Hi all, I'm thinking that a graphical mime type manager would be incredibly useful. It could be just like Konqueror's mime type manager, but be desktop environment agnostic, and capable of global and per-user operation.
One of the hassles I have whenever I'm changing workstation configurations is having people's file associations and mime-types going nuts. Even more of a hassle is that I seem to have to fix the problem on a per-user basis, unless I'm brave enough to run one of my global edit scripts to fix a bunch. It's dangerous and not a very logical way of going about things. It would: * Display current global and user mimetypes. In the case of the user being root, you would be able to edit the file associations for the system, for root, or for an arbitary group of system users. * Allow different programs to open files depending on certain external conditions, such as what display manager is being run at the time. Perhaps an if program X is running, then associate file types Y and Z with application U, or if program Y is running, then associate them with something else, otherwise associate them will some fallback. For example, if I'm running in KDE, I'll want kghostview to display my .ps docs, but if I am running Gnome, I might want ggv, with a fallback of gv. * Allow icons to be associated with different file types in the same way before. So you could show the kghostview icon in KDE, the ggv icon in Gnome and the gv icon as a fallback. * Configure other apps as necessary - Konqueror, Nautilus, etc. * Allow the import of configurations that could be nested within a current configuration, or replace a current configuration. * Have a reliable programmatic interface so that scripts within installers or configuration functions in other programs could reliably adjust the configuration. * Allow for "proposed configurations", where a new configuration is suggested (say, by a word processing application), but the change isn't actually made. The offer of change is made instead. This could be done with the usual two-column add-remove transfer dialogue, and have some notification to the administrator or user that the new config is available. For example, I install as root KWord on our systems, which has fantastic MS Word importing (yes, well I'm living a little in the future!). At the end of the install process I get a dialogue that says something like "KWord is not currently associated with .doc files for all users, would you like to run the file associations manager now?" I could then say "yes!" and go and make KWord the .doc file editor for the users Tom and Jerry, but not for users Ren and Stimpy, as they are smart users and can decide for themselves. When Ren and Stimpy log on, they are informed (perhaps in a systray applet) that KWord has is available for opening certain file types and would they like to edit their file associations. They make their changes, which are honored by all file manager type programs and the like, and everybody is happy. File associations and mime types are a real annoyance for me. If I could just have a good tool for managing them I'd be very happy! Just as an aside, I've had real troubles trying to get Mozilla to open .sxw and .sxc files with OOo. Something about streams or something. Anyone know how to get mozilla to open these files correctly? I'm thinking mainly from the email client. Thanks for your time and consideration. Best regards, Paul
