Making mailcap optional ?
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
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