On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 21:12 +0100, Christian Neumair wrote: > On Di, 2005-11-15 at 14:48 -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote: > > On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 19:53 +0100, Christian Neumair wrote: > > > We'll run into the following issue in the long term: > > > There is an n:1 mapping between MIME types, and glob patterns, i.e. > > > "text/x-patch" has "*.diff" and "*.patch", but the "*.ogg" pattern > > > cannot have multiple MIME types associated. > > > Since we have a few container formats like Windows Media or Ogg, there > > > is no way of telling xdgmime clients that multiple applications match a > > > matched pattern, i.e. that a "*.ogg" file can be an Ogg Theora, or an > > > Ogg Vorbis stream, thus requiring the application to do MIME sniffing > > > before being able what MIME type the file actually is. > > > > In the OGG case, MIME sniffing won't help at all. There is an RFC for > > the application/ogg MIME type, and by definition, all OGG files should > > be that type, regardless of content. To fix the issue, we are going to > > have to come up with something that either goes beyond the MIME type > > itself, and checks other file data, > > [1] proposes to introduce application/x-foo MIME types for the various > contents, and use application/ogg as a their parent, thus using > application/ogg as container type, but - if there was an API for > determining whether multiple patterns are associated with a particular > file name - informing that further investigation (sniffing) is required > for determining the contents type. One of the x-foo types will match, et > voila, we got the type. > > Also note that the pattern "*.pot" matches gettext templates and PPT > presentations. The MIME type can also only be determined sniffing the > contents. > > [1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1002
For some extra data points, one user is complaining that he can't get MatLab file types recognized properly: http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10024 As an added bonus, Maple, MatLab, and Mathematica have all used the .m extension on files at some point. It's also the extension used for Objective-C source files (and that's what xdgmime currently recognizes them as). As for Ogg having only one official MIME type, I don't think we should let crappy RFCs stop us from making usable software. If we have to invent application/x-ogg-theora, then let's do that. (Or, hey, steal those fancy UTIs from Apple...yummy.) I think we need to be able to AND together globs and magic matches to get most of these cases right. But then there are definitely performance considerations if you *have* to do sniffing every time, especially for remote folders. -- Shaun _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
