Ubuntu Wiki

Please check the status of this specification in Launchpad before editing it. If it is Approved, contact the Assignee or another knowledgeable person before making changes.

• Launchpad Entry: preferred-applications

• Packages affected: gnome-control-center, gnome-volume-manager

Summary

Selecting preferred applications is more difficult than it should be. One should be able to say you prefer Abiword and have all filetypes automatically changed. If I prefer F-Spot to G-Thumb, all filetypes *and* the camera importer should be changed. If I change my prefered webbrowser, the panel launcher should change automatically.

List of possible applications should include those in the archive as well, selecting one installs it and marks it preferred.

Release Note

TBD

Rationale

Switching the default application is currently not very discoverable. It involes right-click, Properties/Open with. Switching the for something like a camera is a problem too, its under "removalble devices" and it requires the user to change the commandline arguments (with no go back to default setting).

Use Cases

• Bob wants to change his default from gthumb to f-spot
• Alice wants to use epiphany instead of firefox by default

Design

We need:

• Launchers should support "prefered application" in addition to the current "Command". This way the user can have a web-browser launcher that automatically changes if the preference changes.
• The prefered apps dialog should list available applications as well as installed ones. It should install them if the user selects them (integrate add/remove and the mime-types, tags somehow)

• The "Removable Drives/Media" capplet should be merged into prefered applications (to the extend that makes sense). The prefered applications should have a methods (desktop file?) to tell if/what it supports for removable media (e.g. ImportFromCamera commandline). It should be possible to use some combobox instead of the current (scary) commandline options.

Todo:

• Any relevant existing fd.o specs?
• Discuss with upstream people at FOSSCamp
• Should we submit this as an fd.o spec? If so plan to write it
• Merged Preferred Applications and Removable Media prefs
• Should be accessible from file right-click too
• Preferred application launchers; use them by default/
• Manage alternatives too?

UI Changes

TBD

Test/Demo Plan

TBD

Outstanding Issues

• some change (like update-alternative) would require super user rights

BoF agenda and discussion

Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarising what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.

CategorySpec