Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:
the gedit update probably declared that it could handle text/html and somehow got highest priority. actually, AFAICT, there isn't any way to actually set priorities...it seems you can either set an application to be the default or the most recent definition wins (but don't take my word for it - i'm far from an expert on xdg).
There may have been a post-install script in the package that changed the default. Based on the xdg-mime manual page, it seems there can only be one default application and that Craig's statements above are correct. Nor is it clear to me where the defaults are stored - it probably invokes whatever configuration system your desktop environment uses. Under Gnome, this component is now Gsettings, with Dconf as the storage mechanism. The latter could be better documented: I wanted to change configuration parameters for Gdm under Debian. I tried executing gsettings under the Debian-gdm user, but that failed (unable to connect to D-Bus etc.), whereas the same operation executed as the user running the desktop session works, but obviously changes that user's settings, not Gdm's. It turns out that there's a configuration file for desktop Gdm settings, which at some point when I get back to this task I'm going to try editing. Dconf has its own binary format. There's a command, though (documented in the changelog only for now) to dump part or all of the database to a text file, and a corresponding command for the reverse operation.