How to create a new MIME type for a Sugar activity?

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

  Hello,

> 1).  The Etoys activity does not try to open the file, at all, ever.  
> EToys takes a long time to start up and shut down and it is really 
> annoying when I open the file with EToys instead of my own activity.

  For for the record, Etoys doesn't take a long time to start up.  It
is the fastest activity to start up.  The shut down time can be
optimized in a "lossy" way that we might take after all.  (And, if you
hold the "stop" button for a second, you get a delayed menu.  From
there you can say "quit without save".)

> 2).  My Activity *does* open the file.
> 3).  The Zip files containing images show up in the Journal with my own 
> Activity's icon, which looks like a slide projector.
> 
> To accomplish this I have created my Zip files with the extension 
> ".slides" and I'd like to be able to use the MIME type 
> "application/slides" for such files.
> 
> I'm also interested in creating a reader program for Gutenberg etexts.  
> I'd like these files to have their own MIME type too so they don't get 
> opened by the Write activity by mistake.  I was thinking of using a file 
> suffix of ".book" and a MIME type of "text/book" for these.
> 
> I tried using a mimetypes.xml file in the bundle but that didn't work.  
> I couldn't find an example of an Activity that used such a file so I'm 
> not certain I'm doing it correctly.
> 
> I'd appreciate any information on MIME types or on alternative 
> approaches that would solve problems 1-3.  Thanks much,

  Etoys is probably the good example^^;

  Looking into the "tree" for Etoys
(http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/etoys;a=summary), etoys.xml
which will be installed to /usr/share/mime/packages by Makefile(.in)
and activity.info(.in) that lists the accepted types.

Of course, if you write your slide show in Etoys, that would be a lot
faster (and easier for some people)...

  Hope this helps,

-- Yoshiki