Package: dpkg
Version: 1.13.18
Severity: wishlist
There are many programs that act on a file that contains certain extension
or if they support MIME types, they look up the program associated with it.
The problem is that there are many programs to do the same thing. For example
Person trying to open "File Manager" must remmeber that the
esoteric names are
xfe
mfm
emelfm
worker
krusader
endeavour2
rox-filer
thunar
...
The same problem is with Office programs:
lyx
abiword
oowriter
...
The /etc/alternatives contains a good framework to canonicalize actions to
common names available in system and to control the preferred program.
SUGGESTION
Create new alternatives with names something like:
office-word or just Industry de facto "word"
ooffice-excel or just Industry de facto "excel"
file-manager
archiver The X counterpart for Win32 "WinZip"
media-player For video
music-player For music
This way numerous programs could refer to common program "music-player",
which the arternatives frame work would provide. The generic names would
also add simplicity to overall handling of the various binaries that
would hook themselves to the alternatives base.
Small window managers (Other than the KDE, Gnome, Xfce) would also
benefit from this, because they could use generic menu items and call
the "alternatives" name without the need to refer to certain binary,
which may not be installed.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-1-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ISO-8859-1) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US)
Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii coreutils [textutils] 5.94-1 The GNU core utilities
ii libc6 2.3.6-7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
dpkg recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
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