Re: Application roles

[Peter Cooper]

> It's not a bad idea.  The old Mac OS had something like that and
> Windows has a similar facility now as well.  But I never liked it very
> much because it always seemed to get in the way more than it helped.

I know what you mean. It was good when you just wanted things to work (and
for most users, that's really fine). As soon as you wanted to do anything
else, there's lots of fiddling around with Resedit or control panels.

> For instance I might want to open an HTML file with Word, then open it
> with Notepad, then open it with IE.  As it stands now, I have to set
> up the file type to be associated with all three (and other
> applications, if I want them), then right click and navigate through
> the context menu to select the right application.  That sucks.  It's
> easier just to have a console open and type "notepad mydoc.html".
> It's less stressful.  Maybe there's some way of getting around those
> problems (the need for setup and the difficulty in constantly
> switching from one application to another).

The modern Windows right-click approach offering an "open with..." option
seems adequate for most users who are not willing to open command lines.

There's no reason a Finder/Workspace application can't offer a selection
of applications capable of opening the document in response to a user
gesture, and even allow arbitrary choices too.

It seems clear to me that we are talking about a couple of different kinds
of things:

1. MIME type database
2. File type (and extension) database
3. Application role database

Each of these are subtly different but with overlaps - application roles
seem to me as a set of systemwide defaults used when an application
chooses to launch another "helper" application (ie, need a help viewer,
jpeg editor etc).

File types and extension handling are useful for file open activities,
especially in Finder/Workspace applications.

MIME types tend to be handled by applications and tools which handle
information streams, often from the Internet, and is required to permit
proper naming or typing when saving those streams etc, as well as
launching helper applications.

I could see all of these things in one single GNUstep system database, but
to support local host environments you might have to be a little cunning
about gatewaying the host preferences.

Peter