Interop btwn gnome-dflt-app-props & alternatives system

[Matt Zimmerman]

Please follow up to ubuntu-devel.

On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 01:53:03PM -0700, Micah J. Cowan wrote:
> Please have a look at
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xchat/+bug/61243
> 
> The user submitted this bug on XChat, because the "Open Link In Browser"
> popped up Mozilla instead of Firefox, despite the fact that he had set
> Firefox in gnome-default-applications-properties. I checked the source
> code, and found that XChat uses x-www-browser, and not Gnome's settings.
> I set him onto that (indirectly, by asking what the setting for his
> x-www-browser alternative was), and so his issue was resolved.
> 
> However, from a usability perspective, this situation seems less than
> acceptable to me. Someone should only have to set the "default web
> browser" for his or her desktop in one place, not multiple places.
> 
> What ideas are there for better interoperation between the gnome
> defaults settings and the alternatives systems, especially ones that
> won't make life difficult for package maintainers?

The goal of the alternatives system is to provide a single, reasonable
default choice for all users.  The goal of the desktop preferences is to
allow each user to change the setting away from the default if they desire.

The natural overlap would be for the alternatives system to provide the
default used by the preferences.

In practical terms, though, the alternatives system is often misused and the
source of many bugs.  In many cases, it creates more problems than it
solves, and I'm not sure that we should use it for this purpose at all...

-- 
 - mdz