Re: Bug#108047: see and edit should be included in the alternatives-system (as pager and editor)
On Wed, Aug 08, 2001 at 08:22:57PM -0400, Brian White wrote:
> > Package: mime-support
> > Version: 3.11-1
> > Severity: wishlist
>
> > see and edit should be included in the alternatives-system (as
> > pager and editor)
> >
> > see and edit are intended for this job, so why not include them?
>
> Hmmm... That's an interesting idea. Anybody else have any thoughts on
> this?
It doesn't strike me as a great idea since pager and editor are
expressly intended for text documents, to support the pre-MIME
standard described in policy 12.4. In the unix tradition, the text
editor/viewer is not merely a special-case of media editor/viewer.
I would say it actually makes much more sense for sensible-pager and
sensible-editor to be registered with the MIME system.
On the other hand, there's nothing conceptually wrong with the idea,
and there is some appeal to consolidating configuration. If you do
it, I would make your alternative a wrapper that calls "see
text/plain:$1" or similar. Also, you should ensure that nobody ever
registers sensible-editor or sensible-pager with the MIME system,
lest you wind up with an infinite loop.
Andrew
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