I appreciate the sentiment, but frankly this isn't about improving file.
Even if file could identify every file in existence correctly, a user could
still provide a MIME type override on their system and get nonstandard,
surprising behavior from xdg-mime when it ignores the MIME info databases
and just calls file.

Can an actual xdg-utils maintainer way in on this?

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Reuben Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 4 October 2016 at 21:05, Maxwell Anselm <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> For a specific example of what I'm talking about with XML, I package an
>> RPG utility for Arch Linux called gcs. gcs mainly uses XML files for its
>> data, for example *.spl files are XML files with a spell_list root element
>> that store magic spell information. If I want it to be possible to double
>> click one of these files and have gcs open as the default application, I
>> need to register a new MIME type: gcs obviously can't handle arbitrary XML
>> files, and *.spl is also used for Shockwave Flash files. Now if the file
>> devs really want to push an update so that it correctly identifies gcs
>> spell list files, go right ahead, but personally I would find that kind of
>> ridiculous for such an obscure and specialized utility (though if you do,
>> please use application/x-gurps-spell so that I don't have to update my
>> package ;P).
>>
>
> ​Generally new patterns are added as they're supplied. File can detect all
> sorts of funny formats, and there's no criterion of importance. Please do
> supply some patterns, and, especially for an unusual format, test files!
>
> Ways to contribute listed here: http://www.darwinsys.com/file/ (bug
> tracker or mailing list)​
>
> --
> http://rrt.sc3d.org
>
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