SuggestedPackagesForFiletypesSpec

Revision 4 as of 2006-06-22 12:47:51

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Summary

Ubuntu does not install packages for every file type there is but if a user wants to open a document that is not supported out-of-the-box there should be a option to install the required package(s) to work with that file type.

Rationale

We have the information about the suppported mime-types for most packages via the desktop files already. This information should be used to present a user-friendly way to install packages.

Use cases

  1. Alice clicks on a .xxx document and gets a error message that this file-stype is not supported. She is frustrated by the lack of options.

Scope

Modifications to gnome-app-install and nautilus packages needs to be done.

Design

The information about the supported filetypes is part of the desktop file for the applications. We generate a cached version (pickle?) of the desktop-files database that contains the required information for gnome-app-install.

If a user clicks on a unsupported filetype with nautilus it should talk to gnome-app-install (either via dbus or the commandline) and make it show a dialog of the applications that could possibly open that file-type. Those applications should be ranked with the popcon information and it should be a subset of the normal gnome-app-install window (without the sections on the left and the search field on the top). Nautilus needs to pass the mime-type and the actual path to the file to gnome-app-install. When the user selects "install" and it is installed, g-a-i should open the file with the just installed application.

The interface should honor the "show unsupported", "show restricted" selections of the user. If that results in not showing any application to the user we need to show a entry that explains that with the current view setting nothing can be displayed but that this can be changed with the view settings.

Implementation

Open issues

The lookup if the mime-type can be supported needs to be very fast (and pre-cached) because if we actually do not have any package that supports the given mime-type we need to tell nautilus so that it can display a error dialog. That one should be better worded than the current: "Couldn't display '%s'". Something like "There is no application available to view: '%s'" is more appropriate.

BOF discussion bits

  • - if we have something to install display a dialog with the information and ask the user if he wants to install it - this should most likely bring up gnome-app-install in a special mode without "sections" and "search" and a header with a explaination. open issue: what to do when there is only something in "unsupported" but "unsupported" is unchecked in the g-a-i checkbox. we bring up a text that explains that a component is not checked and expand/show when the checkbox is checked - make sure that commerial stuff (vmware-player, realplayer) does the right thing (display license uri etc) - the dialog invokes gnome-app-install via dbus/commandline and installs the stuff - sort by popularity ranking! - when the application is installed, it is launched with the file that was requested (so g-a-i needs the filename too) - we need a commandline interface (for e.g. firefox that does not use dbus) and optionally a dbus interface
  • make a nicer dialog if a unknown file-type comes up (instead of the current

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

CategorySpec