Re: [Gnumed-devel] Document parts display

[Karsten Hilbert]

> >> What happens on Debian and Ubuntu when this part is double-clicked?
> Does a
> >> window open to display "missing" in *addition* to the Edit Area window
> >> opening?
> > 
> > Yes, it shows just fine for me.
> 
> So, this is the problem for the OS
> 
>       "How do I decide in what application to open this"
> 
> if, on attempted opening, no obvious hint is provided?

Indeed. There is no clear-cut solution to that since by far not all
types of files provide a deliberate identifier within the content.

> Some OS achieve this through mapped file extensions (.PDF)

Yes, but which is broken by design because they also typically allow
to name files any way one wishes. They rely on convention.

Other OS' actually inspect the files to look for tell-tale strings
or structures. Linux does that. I'm sure Mac OS does it, too. GNUmed
relies on operating system services to determine the mime type of
a file and find the viewer/editor configured for that mime type.

This works regardless of the name or way-of-creation of a file.

However, GNUmed also provides two mechanisms to inform lesser OS or
allow finer grained control:

- it allows one to configure mime type mappings private to GNUmed
- it allows one to optionally store an exemplary file name
  with the document part which if available is used to construct
  the file extension if need be

> Any idea how Debian "decides" how to open the text blob "missing"?

Only each application inside Debian does. Debian as such does not.
KDE does, GNOME does, the kernel does to some extent (script type
detection), GNUmed does. All do by asking the mime package that's
installed plus using their own reference data.

> Does postgres somehow communicate (to Debian) what "kind of blob content"
> is being passed to the OS?

No. "Debian" does not care, in fact. But PostgreSQL does not communicate
to any of GNUmed, KDE, GNOME, Okular, OpenOffice, the file system, or
whatever else either. PostgreSQL does, in fact, not care either.

Karsten

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