MIME-types define different file type allowing the operating system to deal with them correctly. Many generic file types are already defined in Puppy such as Jpegs and Mp3s. These are defined by XML description files in the freedesktop.org's package SharedMimeInfo shared-mime-info. If a program only uses generic file-types then there is no need to add a MIME-type, but AssociateFiles associate a current MIME-type to the program.

Note: this method cannot be used in standard Puppy, see below.

A program can provide extra MIME-type information by having an XML description file in /usr/share/mime/packages/

For example this is Audacity Audacity's, /usr/share/mime/packages/audacity.xml

This information is then added to various files in /usr/share/mime using the command update-mime-database (files updated include globs, globs2, magic, subclasses, aliases, icons, generic-icons, XMLnamespaces and mime.cache)

This method can't be used in standard Puppy as the XML descriptions in /usr/share/mime/...(various directories) and the update-mime-database command have been removed (although they are in the devx devx sfs). This saves about 2.5Mb of space. Running update-mime-database without the XML descriptions will remove most of your MIME-types stored in globs, globs2 etc. To add a MIME-type without needing add all descriptions see below.

All ROXFiler ROX needs is an extra line adding to various files in /usr/share/mime (minimally just globs). The echo and >> commands can do this. For example, observing update-mime-database on audacity.xml the equilavent code is:

You should still include the XML MIME-type description, otherwise if update-mime-database is used the added lines will be removed but new description written.

AssociateFiles - How Associate filetypes

InternetMediaTypes Internet Media Types