opera stole my html file association

[genterminl]

I run a KDE desktop, although I use balsa (a gnome app) for email. Until today, when I clicked a URL in an email message, balsa sent the link to Firefox, as I wanted. Today, an emerge upgraded opera to 11.11.2109, and balsa started opening URLs in Opera instead of Firefox. After lots of hunting, I finally remembered gnome-control-center, and changed the association from Opera back to Firefox. I don't think this switch (with no apparent warning) is an appropriate action for an ebuild (I assume that is how it happened - I didn't actually run Opera until balsa invoked it) but I won't bother filing a bug if this is somehow standard behavior.

Jack

[BradN]

I think the problem is that there may not be currently a good way to determine the "default" handler for a file, eg, when you have installed multiple programs that handle a given format. So, the first match might be picked.

There's a couple ways I can think of that this could be worked around, and there might even be good reasons why these aren't done:

- When multiple options are available, always prompt the user which to use unless they indicate a preference. Perhaps have an option of prompting again when a new program is available.
Downside: Might impact interactions that would otherwise be automatic (no user there to make a selection). Can't think of many specific ways that would occur though.
Upside: Users can easily find newly installed applications without having it forced on them. I like this method.

- Have a policy of forcing a permanent default selection the first time a file type is attempted to be opened. Only make a new default if the old application is completely uninstalled or the user manually changes the association.
Downside: Kind of non-deterministic behavior in some cases (say, user A clicks a mp3 file with one set of media players installed, then another media player is installed to the system and a new user B clicks an mp3 file, getting a different default association. The users might not understand why their media players are different.)
Upside: Looks a lot like the original behavior at first glance, while still working around your problem. Might be more easily accepted into a real desktop environment project without needing to break any bones.