On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 01:35:22PM +0200, mcINEK wrote: > W li?cie z czw, 15-05-2003, godz. 13:30, Wouter Verhelst pisze: > > I really think it would be a bad idea to go the alternatives road here. > > But why? Could you give me any reasons? I've said why yes, so you tell > why not ;]
Alternatives are meant for something else. I could want to run a small HTML viewer when I get a HTML-encoded mail, but could want to run mozilla or konqueror as my 'default' webbrowser, when an other application tries to run one. Yes, you could create /another/ alternative for /every/ MIME type in your mailcap, but that would bloat the alternatives system. Also, going the alternatives way would result in a *lot* of work (you'd have to remove all other mailcap entries, since they'd conflict with your work), and would not really be an improvement, since only the sysadmin could change preferences, and users would still be where they are today: having to copy lines from /etc/mailcap to ~/.mailcap. Worse; now they can copy lines; then, they'd have to edit them to be useful, else they'd /still/ run the sysadmin's preferences. Alternatives and mailcap are two different worlds. Please keep them separated. > > If you must, you could write a front-end that parses /etc/mailcap, and > > for a given MIME type, allows a user to pick the application of his/her > > choice; the front-end could then write that to ~/.mailcap. > > It won't work, because the aren't any 'standards'. I don't have idea how > make x/non-x choice from mailcap. I REALLY think alternatives could be > good. It's done in there, all over the place! There's a 'test' option, which is meant to use a line conditionally; it's commonly used to test whether $DISPLAY is set, which is *exactly* what you need. -- Debian GNU/Linux -- http://www.debian.org Nederlandstalige Linux-documentatie -- http://nl.linux.org "An expert can usually spot the difference between a fake charge and a full one, but there are plenty of dead experts." -- National Geographic Channel, in a documentary about large African beasts.
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