Hi, On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 12:33:55AM +0000, Fergal Daly wrote: > On 27/01/2008, Forest Bond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Are you advocating the creation of a program called "open"? > > No, I said "alternatives-based". That is, using the Debian > alternatives system to provide access to one preferred tool from > amongst many similar tools.
Okay, I follow you now, although I think alternatives is for managing different binaries that have the same capabilities, not just the same name... >> Perhaps I was not clear before. What you are looking for already exists, >> and it is called "see" (or, perhaps more appropriately, "edit"). These >> tools pull data from mailcap. > > You were perfectly clear, however there is definitely some > miscommunication. In my last mail _I_ mentioned that see reads from > mailcap and now for some reason you are explaining exactly that to me > (it was in the part you snipped). Indeed, I misread. Apologies. > So let me rephrase my points > > 1 there are multiple tools which do roughly the same thing - see, > gnome-open and probably k-something-or-other and no unified location > for preferences for these tools Right, now I understand; integration has always been a sore spot for open-source software. Competition is a good thing, except when its happening on one machine (especially when that machine happens to be your desktop). :) > 2 multiple tools which do roughly the same thing is no problem > > 3 multiple locations for the same preferences is a bad thing and while > sometimes necessary, should be avoided where possible > > 4 if you don't already know the name of the tool, you are unlikely to > be able to find it Agreed up to this point. > 5 "open" seems to be the obvious name for such a tool. It was the > first thing I tried, it's what's left when you remove "gnome-" from > "gnome-open", it's the verb that appears under every File menu I've > ever seen. It seems quite discoverable. "edit" is also quite > discoverable however if you're just trying to open something to see > it, you're unlikely to try "edit" Well, these are all arbitrary verbs that make sense from one perspective or another (and I noticed you even used the verb "see" here). It seems like one is as good as any other, and that's why I don't think "open" is self-evidently better than "see", "edit", etc... > 6 open is currently a symlink to /usr/bin/openvt - the fact that it's > a symlink and that "man open" talks about "openvt" not "open" makes me > thing that it's ripe for reclamation. I always assumed there was some historical reason for this symlink, but it's difficult to get a useful search result indicating that. > So I am suggesting that Ubuntu would be improved by reclaiming > /usr/bin/open from the console-tools package and replacing it with an > alternatives-based link to a file opener, on Ubuntu -gnome-open, on > Kubuntu - k-something etc etc. Ideally they would all have the same > interface but even without that it would be good. > > It would also be great to have a central mime-type -> action database. > I think that's part of freedesktop but unless see and edit pay > attention to it, the problem is not fully solved, Here's where I definitely agree. Other systems have this, to some extent. It seems like the desktop-specific systems ought to manage mailcap, doesn't it? Or is mailcap too outdated to be practically useful on the desktop? -Forest -- Forest Bond http://www.alittletooquiet.net
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