Bug 56352

What desktop environment are you using?

xdg-utils leverages DE-specific utilities to query/set this stuff, when they are available, for example, under KDE uses:
ktraderclient


That said, looks like the current code only groks
[Default Applications]

section of mimeapps.lst

I use plain openbox, therefore xdg-open goes through open_generic function. No non-standard DE-specific association exceptions should apply.

Agreed, this is generating confusion and incompatibility with the spec being one way and xdg-open handling it in another way.

Hi! any news on this?

For me personally, if there was news, I'd post notice about it here.  I haven't had any time to implement this feature in the generic functions.

The generic functions *do* implement this functionality. The `xdg-mime` utility knows how to deal with mimeapps.list but does it incorrectly. It uses a `[Default Applications]` header not covered in the specification rather than the proper `[Added Associations]` section. The fix is as easy as a quick search and replace of two strings.

Re-reading
http://standards.freedesktop.org/mime-apps-spec/mime-apps-spec-1.0.html
today.

Important bits:

---------------------------
Default Application

Indicating the default application for a given mimetype is done by writing into the group [Default Applications] in the file mimeapps.list.

The [Default Applications] group indicates the preferred application for a given mimetype.
---------------------------

---------------------------
Adding/removing associations

Adding and removing associations between mimetypes and applications is done with the following syntax in the mimeapps.list file:

[Added Associations]
mimetype1=foo1.desktop;foo2.desktop;foo3.desktop
mimetype2=foo4.desktop
[Removed Associations]
mimetype1=foo5.desktop
---------------------------

---------------------------
Application ordering

The suggested algorithm for listing the applications associated to a given mimetype is:

    add any "Default Applications" and then "Added Associations" in the first mimeapps.list

...
---------------------------

So looks like this has been clarified since the bug was filed, and that all of:
[Default Applications]
[Added Associations]
[Removed Associations]
need to be taken into account, highlighting that the xdg-open generic algorithm definitely needs work to comply.

Given the looming (and hopefully soon) release of xdg-utils-1.1.0 (final), I personally won't have the time or interest in the short-term to implement this properly, and until it is implemented, I'm seriously considering making the existing open_generic code be a last-ditch fallback, and prefer (and strongly recommend) a better implementation be present and used instread, including:
gvfs-open
kde-open

and possibly even others:
gnome-open
mate-open
exo-open

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You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-utils/issues/61.