(A)synchronous file operations & xdg-open

[Jerry James]

This came up in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472402 but
is worth a more general discussion amongst the developer community, I
think.

The xdg-open tool is generally a good thing for the users, but at
least a couple of cases have arisen where it is not doing the right
thing.  The problem seems to be that there are two modes of operation
that are wanted.

(1) Launch a tool that can display a persistent URL.  This can be
asynchronous, since the object identified by the URL isn't going away.

(2) Launch a tool that can display or edit a temporary file.  This
must be synchronous, since the entity that created the temporary file
needs to read it after it is edited, and remove it in either case.

xdg-open is being used for both cases.  Some of the tools it invokes,
such as gnome-open, operate in mode 1 and some (kfmclient?) in mode 2.
 When a mode 1 tool is used in a situation that demands a mode 2 tool,
bad things happen (see also
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=435107).

It appears to me that we either need to split xdg-open into two tools,
representing the two modes of operation, or else give xdg-open a
command-line switch to demand synchronous operation.  We also need to
figure out which tools it invokes that operate in mode 1 and find mode
2 equivalents for them.  What do you think?
-- 
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/