Bruce Park wrote (11-12-2004 18:25):
René Seindal wrote:Bruce Park wrote (11-12-2004 16:14):Is it possible that GNOME 2.8 (or Debian for that matter) did away with the "File Association" application found on the Applications -> Desktop Preferences menu?Yes it did,Use "Open with other application" and type in the application you want to use.It will be remembered for that file type afterwards.I wonder, why was it removed? I do realize that once you associated an file to an application, it works fine but most of my original settings have been removed.
I think the idea was to move towards the freedesktop.org system, so application / mime / preferences can be shared between different desktops. It will make it a lot easier for applications to work with different desktops, if they can agree on some common conventions.
I don't think the idea is all bad, but a few things have been lost in the process. I used to have files with different defaults than that of the mime-type. I could do that in gnome 2.6, but not in 2.8.
Another minor thing with the new system is that you cannot enter a user readable name for a custom application. You just see the program name in the menu. To get around that I have to edit the .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications/ by hand.
-- René Seindal (rene@seindal.dk) Seindal Consult