[Rd] shared-mime-info (PR#8278)

[Vaidotas Zemlys]

Hi,

On 04 Nov 2005 13:51:56 +0100, Peter Dalgaard <p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk> wrote:

> One further thought about this:
>
> On SUSE,
>
> rpm -qif /usr/share/mime/
>
> points at
>
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fshared_2dmime_2dinfo
>
> So I guess that the proper tree to bark at is the upstreams
> maintainers of
>
> http://freedesktop.org/~jrb/shared-mime-info-*.tar.gz
>
> Instructions there say to submit new XML files to
>
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/buglist.cgi?product=shared-mime-info&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED
>
> It would likely be a good idea to send them first to R-devel for review.
>

I already barked at upstream. The upstream barked back. The result is here:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1782

There you can find xml file for R scripts. I've made it from some
example. It is really only a proof of a concept. But it would not be
very difficult to produce xml files for mimetypes of all R related
files. We must only decide which R related files would benefit from
having mimetypes.

My proposal is
1. R source code, R scripts. Files with extensions .R, .r and others
(.q?, .s?, .S?). Mimetypes text/x-R, text/x-Rsrc
2. R documentation files. File extension .Rd. Mimetype text/x-Rd
3. RData files. File extension .RData, files which at beginning have
RDX2. Mimetype application/x-RData.
4. Rhistory files. File extension .Rhistory. Mimetype text/x-Rhistory
5. R transcript files from ESS/Emacs. File extension .Rt. Mimetype
text/x-Rtranscript

The relevant xml code could be pushed upstream to end up in
freedesktop.org.xml, or it could be distributed with R linux package,
and installed into relevant subdirectory of /usr/share/mime. With a
bit more work the result could be, that people using for example
Nautilus (graphical Gnome browser) could see R related files displayed
with R logo, and clicking them could result in various appropriate
actions. For example for .RData R process could be iinvoked and
relevant .RData file could be loaded.

I could write and test the xml code. But first we have to agree on
which files benefit from having mimetypes and how the mimetypes should
be named. Feel free to suggest.

Vaidotas Zemlys
--
Doctorate student, http://www.mif.vu.lt/katedros/eka/katedra/zemlys.php
Vilnius University