Version: 2.0 alpha-6 (using KDE 3.5.8) Installed from: Debian testing/unstable Packages KWord 2, apparently along with the rest of KDE 4, changed the RTF MIME type from text/rtf to application/rtf. This is nice, both are accepted by IANA, and OpenOffice uses application/rtf, so everything is more uniform now. What is not nice, however, is that Konqueror from KDE 3 uses text/rtf, so when using KWord 2 with KDE 3, the MIME type association doesn't work. Could you, for compatibility in all directions so to speak, add both application/rtf *and* text/rtf to the kword.desktop and kwordpart.desktop files?
This would give warnings when running kbuildsycoca4, since kde4 (shared-mime-info) doesn't know text/rtf. This combination (koffice2 in a kde3 desktop) seems quite special; if someone installs that (from sources?), he simply has to add kword to text/rtf in the filetypes module. I don't really want to carry legacy mimetypes in our desktop files for another 5 years, we have to come clean at some point, and since there's finally a standard for this...
You are saying there is finally a standard for this. Which one are you referring to? IANA lists both text/rtf and application/rtf without further comment. If you have a source that says that application/rtf is preferred, then I will gladly abide.
I am referring to the freedesktop.org shared-mime-info standard, which kde4 is based upon. ( http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/latest/ although the actual database is more easy to find with CVS or in /usr/share/mime/ on your system )
I find nothing in that standard about what the correct MIME type for RTF is. It appears that it only describes how a database of MIME types is to be maintained.
As I said, the actual database of mimetypes is the shared-mime-info package, which should be installed on your system (/usr/share/mime) or which can be downloaded as a source tarball or as CVS. Or you can trust me, it says: <mime-type type="application/rtf">
Maybe I am mixing up cause and effect here, but the fact that /usr/share/mime/application/rtf.xml exists only means that someone put it there, not that it is the only correct choice. What is to prevent someone from installing text/rtf.xml as well or adding an entry in /usr/share/mime/aliases? The alias file would seem to be the correct choice. Who maintains the aliases file?
On Monday 05 May 2008, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > Maybe I am mixing up cause and effect here, but the fact that /usr/share/mime/application/rtf.xml exists only means that someone put it there, not that it is the only correct choice. "Someone" is the shared-mime-info package, which shows that this is the now-standard mimetype on unix systems. > What is to prevent someone from installing text/rtf.xml as well or adding an entry in /usr/share/mime/aliases? The alias file would seem to be the correct choice. Who maintains the aliases file? Those files are generated, but indeed freedesktop.org.xml could define text/rtf as an alias for application/rtf, for backwards compatibility. This should be requested on https://bugs.freedesktop.org in the shared-mime-info product, freedesktop.org.xml component.
I see that https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16270 exists now; thanks!
Fixed upstream.