-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Christian Neumair wrote: > Am Samstag, den 13.01.2007, 11:59 +0100 schrieb Christian Neumair: >> Am Donnerstag, den 11.01.2007, 20:50 +0000 schrieb Matt Medland: >>> I'm proposing that mime-type association be centralised in the >>> Preferences>Preferred Applications area, since that seems the natural >>> place that anyone would go to. This would, potentially, be useful for >>> everyone. >>> >>> The spec is here: >>> >>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/enhanced-preferred-apps >>> >>> and any comments or criticism would be appreciated. >> I'm extremely in favor of the "MIME type categories" proposed in some >> comments on the spec page, i.e. we'd have certain categories like >> "Audio", "Images", "Plain Text", "Text Documents", "Spreadsheet" etc. >> >> Each category would provide a listing of MIME types that each >> application has to support to be elegible for that category. >> >> The GUI must also allow to determine exceptions for particular MIME >> types that are part of the category, else we're not flexible enough to >> deal the requirements with specialized setups. The specialized MIME >> selection allows to select all applications that can be used for the >> MIME type in question. > > This is what I have in mind technically: > > The idea is to get rid of many of the "defaults.list" entries > (/usr/share/applications/defaults.list), and associate category > information with each MIME type. Applications could then register > against categories, and are just stored in defaults.list (i.e. against > special MIME types) when they are specialized or override the default > handler. Specialized applications would for instance be your favorite > Macromedia Flash Image Extraction Frobnicator. > > I'm currently hard-coding categories and MIME types in a python script, > but we might end up with .desktop files that contain: > > [Category] > DisplayName=Foo > Name=foo > MimeTypes=foo/bar;...; > > Note that we'd standardize the valid "Name" fields. > > > > I'm attaching a little not yet demo application I wrote in python that > can be used to play with the GUI. You can easily download it and run it. > > * Pro: Simple default application selection > > * Con: Many MIME types per category would make the "Details" entry very > long. Either use a specialized dialog, or just list exceptions. > Exceptions have the advantage that they do not list duplicate > information. > > * Con: We use a combo box cell renderer in the tree view. Users might > not be used to it. > > * Con: The current layout will make it impossible to have many MIME > categories although it looks good. We'll hopefully find a solution, > either tab based, or by having a layout like > > > Default Foo Application: [ Application Combo ] [ Details ] > Default Bar Application: [ Application Combo ] [ Details ] > Default FooBar Application: [ Application Combo ] [ Details ] > > > Please run the attached python script and give some feedback! :) > >
Wow, I can tell that you've put lots of effort into this. :) I really like your script, maybe you could put a scrollbar on the side so that we could have more categories. Would there be anyway to only allow one drop-down thing to be open at a time? I think that that gui would work really well once the few small teething problems have been ironed out and it's been jazzed up a bit with some icons. Do you mind if I upload this to the bazaar branch that's attached to the spec? Cheers, Matt -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFqijn2eHdgg4mgnERArTZAJ9nkRU7HOEyPPce8kxcEMYXMFY2hgCfTCo+ FCUrhzRe87PjcYF4n9Ysy4A= =YRTI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
