GNOME (1)
config - GNOME libraries and component information retrieval.
The GNOME system uses MIME types to classify content. Each MIME type
on the GNOME system has a number of attributes attached to it. Some
of these attributes have a special meaning to the GNOME system.
MIME type of files
There are two ways of classifying a file in the GNOME system: by
matching their extension or a regular expression with their name or by
its content. GNOME applications use one of those two methods
depending on speed contraints and the specific setup. The MIME types
available on the system can be configured at runtime by putting
special files in either the GNOME MIME directory
(${prefix}/share/mime-info)
or the user
~/.gnome/mime-info
directory.
MIME type definition files.
The routines that classify a file by its name, use the contents of all
of the files with the extension
.mime
from the
${prefix}/share/mime-info
directory and the
~/.gnome/mime-info
to build the database for
filename matching. The latter is supported to enable users to provide
their mime types to extend the system defaults.
Application that wish to install their own MIME types only need
to install a file in this directory.
The file
${prefix}/share/mime-info/gnome.mime
is
special, as it contains the defaults for gnome, and is read first. In
addition, the file
~/.gnome/mime-info/user.mime
is read last. This will guarantee that there is a way to set system
defaults, and there is a way for the user to override them. There is
currently no way to tell anything about the order of the other files
in those directories, nor is there anyway to override system defaults
yet.
The format is the following:
mime-type-name
ext[,priority]: ext1 ext2 ext3
ext[,priority]: ext4
regex[,priority]: regex1
regex[,priority]: regex2
where "mime-type-name" is a valid MIME type. For example
"text/plain".
For example, for a vCalendar application, this file would be
installed:
------ calendar.mime -------
application/v-calendar:
ext: vcf
-----------------------------
MIME key information
To add keys to a MIME type, it is necessary to install a file with the
extension
.keys
in the
${prefix}/share/mime-info
directory or in the
~/.gnome/mime-info
directory. The former is for system-provided mime-information and the
latter is to enable the user to extend the actions as provided by the
system.
The file
${prefix}/share/mime-info/gnome.keys
is
special, as it contains the defaults for gnome, and is read first. In
addition, the file
~/.gnome/mime-info/user.keys
is
read last. This will guarantee that there is a way to set system
defaults, and there is a way for the user to override them. There is
currently no way to tell anything about the order of the other files in
those directories, nor is there anyway to override system defaults yet.
The
.keys
files have the following format:
mime-type-match:
[\[LANG\]]key=value
Above, the
key
is the key that is being
defined and
value
is the value we bind to
it. The optional
[LANG]
represents a language in which this definition is valid. If this part
is specified, then the definition will only be valid if LANG matches
the setting of the environment variable LANG. The LANG setting is
used to provide keys which can be displayed to the user in a localized
way.
This is an example to bind the key
open
to all of
the mime-types matching
image/*
and the
icon-filename
key is bound to the
/opt/gimp/share/xcf.png
value:
image/*:
open=gimp %f
image/x-xcf:
icon-filename=/opt/gimp/share/xcf.png
This will make the GIMP the handler for the open action. Files of
type xcf would use the filename pointed in the
icon-filename
key.
%f gets
interpolated with the file name or the list of file names that
matched this mime-type.
As you can see from the example above, a
.keys
file does not need to provide all of the values, it can just provide
or override some of the actions.
User defined bindings in
.keys file will take
precedence over system installed files.
Special key used by the GNOME system
The following keys are currently used in the GNOME
desktop:
open
Open the file with this command.
icon-filename
The filename with the icon that should be used to represent files of this type.
view
Command to view the file contents.
ascii-view
A command that should be used to do an ascii-rendering of the file.
Used as a fallback by the filemanager if a
view action
does not exist.
fm-open
file-manager open. If
present, the file manager will use this action instead of the value in
open to perform this action (the filemanager for example will open
archive files as if they were directories by using the VFS).
fm-view
file-manager view. If present, invoking the view opertion on the file
manager will use the value defined here instead of the value in
"view".
fm-ascii-view
Fallback operation for the file manager as well.
Those keys are also queried on the metadata (except in the cases where
the lookup would be too expensive).
AUTHOR
This manual page has been written by Miguel de Icaza (miguel@gnu.org)
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TQ
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