On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:48:37 -0400, Walter Dnes <waltdnes at waltdnes.org> wrote:
Can we have 3 options? 1) The "out-of-the-box" default is to ask what to do 2) Save to disk 3) Specify a helper application. Allow to specify parameters as required.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Good; that probably means neither of us is crazy. (Or else we're *both* crazy, but at least neither of us is crazy alone!)
And for number 3; puhleeeese don't "pull a Firefox" by de-referencing symlinks. For instance...
$ ll /usr/bin/abiword lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Sep 3 02:53 /usr/bin/abiword -> abiword-2.8
When you tell Firefox to use abiword for *.doc files, it de-references the symlink and uses /usr/bin/abiword-2.8. So a few weeks from now, an update upgrades me to abiword-2.9 and Firefox whines about not being able to find /usr/bin/abiword-2.8 when I click on a link to a *.doc file. See also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=176486 Warning, some strong language from annoyed users. See especially comments 46, 47, and 48.
What's the point of dereferencing symlinks, anyway? Symlinks in /usr/bin are usually there for a reason, and dereferencing them would actually take *more* code than not. I'm tempted to fire up my Unix machine and just start coding now... and yes, I do keep an OpenBSD install and unpatched mainline sources handy, in case anyone thinks I only code for the one platform :-) ~Benjamin