how to get the os file icon for a given content-type?

[Paul Boddie]

neoedmund wrote:

[File icons for a given content type]

> So what? Java 5.0 has the method, why python has not?

I'd be generally surprised if whichever Java API responsible for this
managed to work it out correctly for the different free desktop
environments (KDE, GNOME, etc.), partly because things like icon naming
and organisation have only been standardised relatively recently, and
partly because the heritage of Java's cross-platform capabilities would
suggest some suboptimal solution involving icons that are totally alien
to the actual desktop environment in use (or at best some icons for
GNOME) - something which would appear to be enough of a solution for
Windows developers, for example, but which would be blatantly
inappropriate for users of those other desktop environments. Still, I'd
be interested/impressed to learn otherwise, and I guess that this
project provides the API concerned:

https://jdic.dev.java.net/

There is a package for Python which supports the different
freedesktop.org standards, but I'm not sure whether it provides exactly
the support requested:

http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pyxdg

Generally, desktop integration in Python's standard library has been
restricted to things like Web browser invocation, but I'd like to
expand the desktop module to include other common desktop environment
facilities:

http://www.python.org/pypi/desktop

In short, there is probably no standard library solution for this
problem. Cross-platform frameworks like PyQt may offer access to
desktop information, but I'm not completely convinced of that. I
suppose we all just have to work a bit harder to address this need.

Paul