[gcmd-dev] GNOME mime-types again have changed

[Micha]

I'm just fiddling with gnome 2.12.2

I clicked on a wav file, which was opened with totem.
Then i said rightclick->open with different-> (chooser) xine.
'Xine' will now show up in nauilus contextmenu below the default entry
(seems any app choosen by 'open with' will be listed there).
Then i looked into ~/.local ... and what do i find ?

audio/x-wav=xine-usercustom.desktop

Next i tried (once again) the nautilus 'properies' -> 'open with' thing, on an 
mpeg file.
It offers a radiobutton chooser where you can check the default application.
My favourite, vlc, wasn't there so i said 'add new' and added it to the list.
Which created the file

video/mpeg=vlc-usercustom-1.desktop

....hey, wait, why usercustom-1 ?? Because i had applied (as test) vlc to
the .wav file, before, too, which already created a usercustom.desktop file.
So, gnome creates a seperate "<application>-user{created,custom}-<#>.desktop" 
file for every single application<->mimetype relation defined by nautilus menu.
And it differntiates now if it's created by custom command, or a custom command
choosen from the list of (total) available apps. If i understood it right...

Another issue is, the nautilus default radiobutton chooser is slow as hell, i 
have to wait
more than a second until the mousecklick gets applied, and another second until 
the 
inout focus (like 'close`button) is active again. <sigh> !
It can be shown that any click gets immediately applied to the freedesktop 
files (written to HD)
which means, the chooser tries to sort out the ugly mess every click anew.

It must be added that, if you lookup this .loacl directory with nautilus, the 
.desktop files 
will be interpreted by nautilus, so ypu can't open them in texteditor, not even 
see the real
filename. For example, i see 2 entries 'VLC-Videoplayer' instead of the 
"usercustom" files.

Well, folks. You may say hey, you're on debian unstable. But i'm pretty sure 
this is what
other distros implement as default, some may even go farther (like gnoppix).
And it's just crap, i'm sorry.

I still recommend strongly to get rid of the gnome dependency. I wouldn't even 
trust any
other dektop enviornment. I would just implement my own simple mimetype list,
and live in peace fro many years to come.

Even if you use gnome-desktop, you will never experience the un-sync until you
try to open somtehing with nautilus. This is unlikely to happen, however, let's 
assume it will occur, now and then. That's still no problem, because it would 
anytime 
be possible to hack an additional  python plugin which does, on demand, a sync
between gcmd and nautilus: either implement the gcmd maimetpyes to nautilus,
or vice vers. As it looks now, this seems to be a somewhat extensive process,
with analyzing what's in .local, builidng internal database (gcmd style), 
writing 
back to optimized files (on application homefile instead of several) and 
deleting
obsolete crap. Cleaning up nautilus, that is.
Anyway much better not to have to do this every time a user changes a mimetype !
It will definitly last some seconds, and then you would have the same mess as
nautilus has now: To me, it feels like to be ffoled if i have to wait seconds 
for 
something which i know is unnecessary bad workaround code in the first place.
This was the reason i left gnome 4 years ago, and despite many improvements and
some good ideas, the ugly feeling to loose time and to get fooled was left 
everytime i 
tired to work with the gnome-desktop again, after major version jumps.

So far...

ps. Another thing changed. If you put an entry like
"x-directory/normal=dillo-usercreated.desktop;gnome-commander-version-usercreated.desktop;xzgv-usercreated.desktop;"
into the mimeinfo.cache file, (with default='open folder' by nautilus, of 
course) 
then they will be listed in the context menu as 'open with xyz' list, sorted 
alphabetically.
With gnome 2.12 it was shown in reverse order of entries, so you could control
which one was at top of the list (this was always the last entry). 
Just another detail where gnome nukes user control.

pps. Looks like gome-desktop works only with LANG=xy_XY.UTF-8...however, 
there seems to be a problem when i try to launch any app through GCMD 
It doesn't work anymore, in this gnome-session, neither with simple click 
nor via context menu custom commands. The log (xconsole) says,
"(lt-gnome-commander:8345): Pango-WARNING **: Invalid UTF-8 string passed to 
pango_layout_set_text()
gnome-session: you're already running a session manager"
This needs more investigation, though.