Hello everybody, (please CC me, I am not subscribed)
The mailcap (metamail capability file) system, defined by RFC 1524, associates media types (called MIME types at the time) to software available to handle them. It was created to open email attachements but can also be used with downloaded files, etc. A main database is found in /etc/mailcap and user-specified entries can be added in their home directories. In Debian, the mailcap system is provided by the mime-support package, which I adopted a couple years ago. It has a Standard priority. The package contains a template for /etc/mailcap, a tool for interrogating this database and launching programs (run-mailcap), and a few debian-specific additions to handle Debian packages, audio files, etc. Other Debian packages can provide entries for /etc/mailcap by depositing files containing new entries in /usr/lib/mime/packages, which is monitored by dpkg with a "noawait" trigger. Modern desktop environments typically use the Desktop menu entry system and the shared-mime-info database instead of the mailcap system. Thereofore, I wonder if it is time to make the mailcap system optional, for instance to help reducing the number of dpkg triggers active on standard systems. But the mime-support package has also another function, which is to provide the /etc/mime.types file, that associates file suffixes to media types. This is of course essential to the mailcap system, but it is also used by many other packages, as one can see from the reverse-depends list of mime-support. The contents of /etc/mime.types mostly stems from the IANA (RFC 6838). Therefore I am tempted to move the mailcap system into a new package (which could be called "mailcap" for instance). The mime-support package would basically contain /etc/mime.types only. In the future, I would be happy to automate (or see other people automate) the update of the /etc/mime.types file from information taken from the IANA website, perhaps in coordination with other distributions. Please let me know your thoughts (perhaps after waiting a day or two to let your thoughts mature). Have a nice day, Charles -- Charles Plessy Akano, Uruma, Okinawa, Japan
