MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Types were originally used to associate file types sent between Internet E-mail clients, however it has since been extended to other applications including web browsers and file system browsers (such as Endeavour).
Endeavour has a built-in MIME Types engine, that supports objects of different types and uniquenesses to be associated with each other. Each MIME Type has the following properties:
System Object
, File Format
,
Application
, or Unique Object
.
Application
or Unique Object
.
.
character. This value exists only if the
class is set to File Format
.
Application
, File Format
or
Unique Object
.
Each one of those MIME Types may have one or more commands
(Application
class MIME Types usually only have one
command),
where the first command is considered the default. Each command
has a name and a command string. The command string may be a
reference to another MIME Type of class Application
.
From the Endeavour browser window, go to View->MIME Types... You will see a dialog appear containing a list of all defined MIME Types.
Suppose you want to define a MIME Type for a text file format
who's file name extension is .txt
and the default program to
be executed for it is /usr/bin/tknotepad
, then first select
an item from the list at where you wish to insert your new MIME Type
in and then click on Add...
A new MIME Type will be added and a dialog will appear prompting you for information about the new MIME Type. You should set each of the values as shown below:
To add a value to the Commands list, first make sure the handler
is set to Command
and then click on the plus-shaped button.
Next, press Button2 over the new command's cell
(not just anywhere on the row) to change the appropriate value.
You can also set an icon for this MIME Type by clicking on the
corresponding icon frame on the right column and selecting an
.xpm
file. Each icon has a Standard, Selected, and
Extended state. In most cases you only need to set the Standard icon.
Endeavour comes with a set of commonly used icons located in
/usr/share/endeavour2/icons/
Click on OK when you are done.
So in the future if you double click on an object on any of
Endeavour's windows who has an extension of .txt
it will run the command:
/usr/bin/tknotepad /somewhere/somefile.txt
Where /somewhere/somefile.txt
is the full path to the
actual object.
When you define a command for your MIME Type, you can set that
command to either reffer to a specific program (as seen in the
above example) or you can reffer it to another MIME Type who's
class is set to Application
.
To reffer the command of one MIME Type to another MIME Type first create a new MIME Type by clicking on Add... and set its values to the following:
Application
application/text/editor
/usr/bin/tknotepad
default
/usr/bin/tknotepad
Note, for a MIME Type who's class is set to
Application
only the first defined command will be used,
subsequent commands are never used.
Click on OK when you are done.
Now go and edit the previous MIME Type that defined your
.txt
file format and change its command to
reffer to the type value of the new MIME Type, which is
application/text/editor
. Notice
that command value
does not start with an absolute path, this implies
that the command is to reffer to another MIME Type.
Now the default command for an object who's extension is
.txt
will be refered to the new
Application
class MIME Type who's type value is set to
application/text/editor
. This will allow you to change your
prefered application for a group of MIME Types that all require just one
common application by only changing that one Application
class MIME Type.
The items that appear in the "Open With" list (the list that you
see when you go to File->Open With...) are MIME Types
who's class is set to Application
.
To add an item to the "Open With" list, follow the steps in section
Defining a MIME Type. Make sure
that you set the MIME Type's class to Application
.
File formats that contain MIME Types which this application can import are listed as follows:
$HOME/.mailcap
)
$HOME/.media.types
)
$HOME/.endeavour2/mimetypes.ini
)
To import MIME Types:
File formats that contain MIME Types which this application can export are listed as follows:
$HOME/.mailcap
)
$HOME/.media.types
)
$HOME/.endeavour2/mimetypes.ini
)
To export MIME Types:
To define your own global MIME Types, you must have access
to the global MIME Types file
/usr/share/endeavour2/mimetypes.ini
.
Before you begin, you should back up the existing global MIME Types file!
Defining global MIME Types is similar to the Export process, the steps are as follows.
Endeavour MIME Types files (.ini)
format.
If there were no errors encountered in the above steps and you
backed up your old global MIME Types file, move the
MIME Types file you just exported to
/usr/share/endeavour2/mimetypes.ini
and then restart
Endeavour.
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