- <p>
- The <package>mime-support</package> package provides the
- <prgn>update-mime</prgn> program, which integrates these
- registrations in the <file>/etc/mailcap</file> file, using dpkg
- triggers<footnote>
- Creating, modifying or removing a file in
- <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file> using maintainer scripts will
- not activate the trigger. In that case, it can be done by calling
- <tt>dpkg-trigger --no-await /usr/lib/mime/packages</tt> from
- the maintainer script after creating, modifying, or removing
- the file.
- </footnote>.
- Packages using this facility <em>should not</em> depend on,
- recommend, or suggest <prgn>mime-support</prgn>.
- </p>
+ <sect1 id="media-types-freedesktop">
+ <heading>Registration of media type handlers with desktop entries</heading>
+
+ <p>
+ Packages shipping an application able to view, edit or point to
+ files of a given media type, or open links with a given URI scheme,
+ should list it in the <tt>MimeType</tt> key of the application's
+ <qref id="menus">desktop entry</qref>. For URI schemes,
+ the relevant MIME types are <tt>x-scheme-handler/*</tt> (e.g.
+ <tt>x-scheme-handler/https</tt>).
+ </p>
+ </sect1>
+
+ <sect1 id="mailcap">
+ <heading>Registration of media type handlers with mailcap entries</heading>
+
+ <p>
+ Packages that are not using desktop entries for registration should
+ install a file in <manref name="mailcap" section="5"> format (RFC
+ 1524) in the directory <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file>. The
+ file name should be the binary package's name.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ The <package>mime-support</package> package provides the
+ <prgn>update-mime</prgn> program, which integrates these
+ registrations in the <file>/etc/mailcap</file> file, using dpkg
+ triggers<footnote>
+ Creating, modifying or removing a file in
+ <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file> using maintainer scripts will
+ not activate the trigger. In that case, it can be done by calling
+ <tt>dpkg-trigger --no-await /usr/lib/mime/packages</tt> from
+ the maintainer script after creating, modifying, or removing
+ the file.
+ </footnote>.
+
+ <p>
+ Packages installing desktop entries should not install mailcap
+ entries for the same program, because the
+ <package>mime-support</package> package already reads desktop
+ entries.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ Packages using these facilities <em>should not</em> depend on,
+ recommend, or suggest <prgn>mime-support</prgn>.
+ </p>
+ </sect1>
+
+ <sect1 id="file-media-type">
+ <heading>Providing media types to files</heading>
+
+ <p>
+ The media type of a file is discovered by inspecting the file's
+ extension or its <manref name="magic" section="5"> pattern, and
+ interrogating a database associating them with media types.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ To support new associations between media types and files, their
+ characteristic file extensions and magic patterns should be
+ registered to the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). See
+ <url id="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types"> and RFC 6838
+ for details. This information will then propagate to the systems
+ discovering file media types in Debian, provided by the
+ <package>shared-mime-info</package>,
+ <package>mime-support</package> and <package>file</package>
+ packages. If registration and propagation can not be waited for,
+ support can be asked to the maintainers of the packages mentioned
+ above.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ For files that are produced and read by a single application, it
+ is also possible to declare this association to the
+ <em>Shared MIME Info</em> system by installing in the directory
+ <file>/usr/share/mime/packages</file> a file in the XML format
+ specified at <url id="http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/latest/">.
+ </p>
+ </sect1>