mime, freedesktop.org and mutt
I posted this to mutt-users and Kyle there suggested posting it here.
This message may be complete nonsense. I am trying to find my way into
something. I understand that KDE 4 and GNOME > 2.4 use the
freedesktop.org mime databases to determine the mime type.
Has any thought ever been given to using these databases in mutt in
place of mime.types when sending mail and in place of mailcap on receipt
of mail and when using auto_view?
The possible advantages could be that it is possible to sort out
conflicting mime types by doing some 'magic' on the file itself on the
fly. I come to this because I have just come back to improving and
adding to various ways I put forward for dealing with chemical mime
type: chemical/x-?? in mutt. A very common extension *.pdb for Protein
Database Files uses chemical/s-pdb but this conflicts with *.pdb using
/application/vnd.palm. We could possibly use the freedesktop mime
databases to sort this and other problems out.
There is a new project on chemical mime that is adding chemical mime
types and information for parsing the files involved to these freedesktop.org
mime databases.
I hope I have not made too many mistakes in the above. I am still trying
to get into it.
Is this the linux way of the future for mime? If so, should we not be
getting mutt to know about it, if we want to stay ahead of the pack on
support for mime. Has anyone thought about this? Is it already in mutt?
Is is possible or even desirable?
Brian.
--
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?". I am not able rightly to comprehend the kind of confusion of
ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage
Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) Email: b_duke(AT)bigpond(DOT)net(DOT)au