How does MIME handling exactly work?

[Alexander Larsson]

On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 22:49, Gérard Milmeister wrote:
> What is the exact procedure that gnome-vfs2 (as in nautilus) uses to
> determine the mime-type?
> 
> Apparently the mime types in /usr/share/mime-info (and in
> ~.gnome/mime-info) are no longer used. I noticed this, when I tried to
> create a mime type "application/mathematica" with extension "nb" for
> Mathematica notebooks. This shows up in gnome-file-types-properties, but
> other otherwise is completely ignored and gnomevfs-info
> file://$PWD/measure.nb simply shows:
> Name              : measure.nb
> Type              : Regular
> MIME type         : text/plain
> So, is it true, that a user can assign an application to a mime type
> that already exists, but not create new ones?

Yes. This is a known bug, caused by gnome moving over to a new mime
system, but failing to do so in all places. Some people are working on
fixing mime in Gnome atm.

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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
He's a witless Amish card sharp from the Mississippi delta. She's a violent 
blonde college professor with the soul of a mighty warrior. They fight crime!