Adding an application to the default applications

For application developers.

The new gnome-default-applications-properties allows applications to provide a new entry in the default applications preferences without modifying the control-center.

Note that this is just dropping a single file in a directory, and shouldn't stop any non-GNOME applications from adding support for this feature.

The definition

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE default-apps SYSTEM "gnome-da-list.dtd">
<default-apps>
  <web-browsers>
    <web-browser>
      <_name>Arora</_name>
      <executable>arora</executable>
      <command>arora %s</command>
      <icon-name>web-browser</icon-name>
      <run-in-terminal>false</run-in-terminal>
      <netscape-remote>false</netscape-remote>
    </web-browser>
  </web-browsers>
</default-apps>

Make sure this XML file gets translated, this is where the gnome-default-applications-properties will look for translations. This usually means adding intltool support to your build system.

Note the "web-browsers" and "web-browser" parts. This should be replaced by:

• mail-readers and mail-reader for Mailers.
• terminals and terminal for Terminal emulators.
• media-players and media-player for Movie and Music players.
• a11y-visual and visual for Visual Accessibility helpers.
• a11y-mobility and mobility for Mobility Accessibility helpers.

Your best course of action is copying an existing entry from gnome-default-applications.xml.in for the application type you want to support.

Where to drop the file

1. The file needs to be located in $(prefix)/gnome-control-center/default-apps

After having created your .xml file, you'll need to get it installed. It needs to be installed according to the output of:

  pkg-config --variable=defappsdir gnome-default-applications

Here's a snippet to use in your configure.ac or configure.in:

AC_MSG_CHECKING([whether to install GNOME control-center default application definition])
if $PKG_CONFIG --variable=keysdir gnome-default-applications >/dev/null ; then
     AC_MSG_RESULT([yes])
     DEFAULTAPPS_DIR="`$PKG_CONFIG --variable=defappsdir gnome-default-applications`"
     AC_SUBST(DEFAULTAPPS_DIR)
else
     AC_MSG_RESULT([no])
     DEFAULTAPPS_DIR=""
fi
AM_CONDITIONAL([DEFAULT_APPS_DEFINITION],[test -n "$DEFAULTAPPS_DIR"])

And in the Makefile.am in the directory where the XML file is:

xml_in_files = browser.xml.in

if DEFAULT_APPS_DEFINITION
xmldir       = $(DEFAULTAPPS_DIR)
xml_DATA     = $(xml_in_files:.xml.in=.xml)
endif

@INTLTOOL_XML_RULE@

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