mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Lionel Elie Mamane <address@hidden>]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 09:12:50PM -0500, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote:
> Andrea Gamba wrote:

>> I think that it should be the job of the .deb install script to add
>> correctly all the mime types and icons in the right places.

> I do not know much about mime types. I will try to learn about them
> this weekend and see what I can do.

If I remember well, there are actually two databases of MIME types and
actions/icons, one used by "old-style" programs (like mutt) and one
used by "new style" programs (gnome, future versions of KDE, ...); see
the Debian packages mime-support and shared-mime-info.


The Debian-specific documentation about support for MIME types is:

 http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/
 man update-mime
 man dh_installmime

These are the mechanisms in Debian to automate the installing of the
MIME types in the right (Debian-specific) place and regenerating files
that need regenerating. As to writing these files itself, it is not
Debian-specific, but cross-distribution, I believe. See

 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec
 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/mime-actions-spec
 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec
 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/icon-theme-spec

for the "new" database (shared-mime-info) and

 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1524.txt
 (and in lesser degree
  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1523.txt
  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1522.txt)

for the "old" database.

-- 
Lionel