(A)synchronous file operations & xdg-open

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/