invalid MIME type in /usr/share/applications/gnumeric.desktop

Description of problem:

The following is reported during an installation:

Error in file "/usr/share/applications/fedora-gnumeric.desktop": "zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls" is an invalid MIME type ("zz-application" is an unregistered media type)

This is likely an old entry but something started to care.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gnumeric-1.10.0-1.fc14

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 14 development cycle.
Changing version to '14'.

More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

This bug also affects Fedora 13 (gnumeric-1.10.0-1.fc13.i686)
and earlier releases

*** Bug 587620 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

The problem is in the checker, not in Gnumeric.

"zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls" is real mime type. See, for example,
http://filetonic.com/blog/tag/file-extension/. It is unregistered and
probably violates a spec or two somewhere, but it is real. When the
spec and reality disagree, the spec is due for service.

Upstream bug is here https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619303
I am not sure why it is WONTFIX as opposed to NOTABUG.

(In reply to comment #4)
> The problem is in the checker, not in Gnumeric.
....
> I am not sure why it is WONTFIX as opposed to NOTABUG.

It is clearly a BUG. Maybe not that crucial after all but it is there. Where and how it should be fixed is another question.

OK, this BUG now starts to interfere with me updating gnumeric:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/gnome-chemistry-utils-0.12.6-2.fc14,goffice-0.8.13-1.fc14,gnumeric-1.10.13-1.fc14

Similar to 587566.

update-desktop-database complains about mime-types starting with zz-application, for example on a system with gnumeric installed:

Error in file "/usr/share/applications/fedora-gnumeric.desktop": "zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls" is an invalid MIME type ("zz-application" is an unregistered media type)

gnumeric upstream refuses to fix this, see:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619303

I believe they are right in refusing to fix this, the zz-application/zz-winassoc-* mime-types, although not standards compliant, are widely used out there, see for example:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/p8docs/v4r5m1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.p8.doc%2Fadmin%2Fpublishing%2Fpub_supported_gold_list.htm
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Word_Document_%28DOC%29
https://packetprotector.org/trac/browser/USB_dir_2.x/trunk/packetprotector/etc/dansguardian/lists/downloadmanagers/managedmimetypelist?rev=268

zz-application/zz-winassoc-* can thus be encountered in http / email mime headers in the wild. Thus it makes sense for applications who can handle them to specify so in their .desktop file.

I suggest adding zz-application to the known_fdo_media_types array like this was done with the chemical media type. The fact that currently desktop-file-utils warns over this each time a package post installation script runs update-desktop-database is very annoying. So annoying that almost all distros have a bug for tracking this, and if you google for zz-winassoc-xls the first 7 hits are all bugreports about this.

If you agree that zz-application should be added to the known_fdo_media_types array I'll happily provide a patch for this.

Thanks,

Hans

Sure, patch welcome :-)

Btw, I realize we mark zz-application/zz-winassoc-cdr as discouraged. This might be a good approach too for zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls and others (although I understand the argument that this mime type might be referenced in old mails)

I've filed a bug upstream for this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41286

Created attachment 51795
PATCH: mimeutils: deal with various zz-application/zz-winassoc-XXX mime types

Hi,

(In reply to comment #2)
> Btw, I realize we mark zz-application/zz-winassoc-cdr as discouraged. This
> might be a good approach too for zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls and others
> (although I understand the argument that this mime type might be referenced in
> old mails)

I've been thinking a bit about this. I think discouraging them is the right thing to do in general. But for types which apps really want to claim for interoperability reasons, and thus consciously claim like gnumeric upstream refusing to stop using zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls, discouraging them does not help.

Discouraging these will still cause update-desktop-database to complain, which as experience shows (see google results for zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls), leads to lots of bugreports for all distributions.

So I've come up with a patch which makes mimeutils deal with this in 2 different ways:
1) For the "popular" ones (doc and xls) simply accept them
2) For the others, advice the standard mime type for these files

I hope this is an acceptable solution. If it is the patch is git format-patch output, so all you need to do is git am it :)

Regards,

Hans

I've been thinking about this again. We probably need to update shared-mime-info to have all the aliases you added here, as well as aliases for zz-application/zz-winassoc-doc and zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls.

And once we get those last two aliases, I'm actually unsure we need to put those two as exceptions -- I would think that our mime stack would be clever enough to think: "want to open zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls, which is an alias to application/vnd.ms-excel, so want to open application/vnd.ms-excel".

What do you think?

(In reply to comment #4)
> I've been thinking about this again. We probably need to update
> shared-mime-info to have all the aliases you added here, as well as aliases for
> zz-application/zz-winassoc-doc and zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls.
>

That sounds like a good idea.

> And once we get those last two aliases, I'm actually unsure we need to put
> those two as exceptions -- I would think that our mime stack would be clever
> enough to think: "want to open zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls, which is an
> alias to application/vnd.ms-excel, so want to open application/vnd.ms-excel".
>
> What do you think?

I think that wrt "our mime stack would be clever enough", that the proof is in the pudding. IOW we need to make sure that is the case (and then convince the gnumeric people of this and that since the alias is now in shared-mime-info, that they can drop it from their desktop file).

I've no idea how to quickly / easily test this though, and I don't have a lot of time to spend on this. So I would like to move forward with my latest patch for now, I'll also do a patch for shared-mime-info, and then maybe later we can see if the aliases can be removed from desktop files since our mime infra takes care of it.

Hans: first, thanks for your time :-)

So I checked our mime system is sane:

 - application/x-wordperfect is an alias for application/vnd.wordperfect

 - $ grep -rl application/x-wordperfect /usr/share/applications/
   $

 - $ grep -rl application/vnd.wordperfect /usr/share/applications/
   /usr/share/applications/defaults.list
   /usr/share/applications/writer.desktop
   /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

 - $ gvfs-mime --query application/x-wordperfect
   Default application for 'application/x-wordperfect': writer.desktop
   Registered applications:
           writer.desktop

So it works as expected. I'll talk to the gnumeric people.

I committed your patch, and then changed them all to aliases. This depends on the following bugs in shared-mime-info to work really properly, though: bug 41989, bug 41708, bug 36036, bug 41680, bug 41684.

gnumeric-1.10.17-1.fc16.x86_64 is affected, too.

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Fixed in gnumeric-1.11.5-1.fc17.x86_64.

Hi,

this bug has been closed, however the error message is still there in Debian sid and Ubuntu 14.10:

# update-desktop-database
Warning in file "/usr/share/applications/gnumeric.desktop": usage of MIME type "zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls" is discouraged ("zz-application/zz-winassoc-xls" should be replaced with "application/vnd.ms-excel")

Sorry for the noise, reassigning to new maintainer.