Re: Inconsistency between mime-support, shared-mime-info and file for PHP files media types.
Le Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 07:37:17PM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
>
> There was a previous discussion on debian-devel about this, during which I
> posted a scetch of an implementation strategy for converting the XDG MIME
> files to the mailcap syntax. Someone else then fleshed out that script a
> bit more, and I thought submitted it to the BTS, and then there was some
> subsequent discussion in the Technical Committee in the context of the
> evince application/pdf MIME registration that I thought indicated someone
> was working on that further. It may be that I had misunderstood.
Now I understand :)
There are two FreeDeskotp (XDG) works relevant to media (MIME) types.
- The menu entry specification (http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/),
where a program can declare that it can operate on a given media type. This
is the one that was recently discussed, and indeed mime-support in experimental
is a first step into de-duplication of information between packages desktop menu
entries and mailcap entries.
- The shared MIME info database and its specification (http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/shared-mime-info)
(http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/shared-mime-info-spec-latest.html),
where media types are associated with file suffixes. Some of these associations
stem from the media type registrations to the IANA, which in the mime-support package
are reflected in /etc/mime.types. The shared MIME info database is distributed
in Debian's package shared-mime-info, and in theory, this package would be able
to produce and distribute /etc/mime.types as well. In practice, I think that the
unregistered types should be compared first.
I hope I (or others) will find time to submit a patch to the Policy in the next
months, to describe shared-mime-info in the same way as mime-support.
There is a third provider of media types, the "file" package. I think it would
be good to eventually have a solid description of how media types are inferred in
Debian systems, and which packages operate on which installation profiles (mime-support
and file are of standard priority, while shared-mime-info is optional).
By the way, I completely agree to the comment you made to Josselin. The
packages providing the minimal functionality are not a hindrance to more
advanced solutions. I hope that the recent upload of mime-support to
experimental is a clear enough message.
Cheers,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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