[arch-general] File Associations for firefox & thunderbird :)^

[Patrick Brisbin]

On 06/14/10 at 11:33pm, Michishige Kaito wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> 
> >Excerpts from Nilesh Govindarajan's message of 2010-06-14 18:28:24 +0200:
> >>On 06/14/2010 09:07 PM, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> >>>Excerpts from Nilesh Govindarajan's message of 2010-06-14 17:09:26 +0200:
> >>>>I am a full time KDE user and I don't have GNOME or its libraries.
> >>>>Firefox and Thunderbird keep asking me to choose applications to open
> >>>>.pdf, .doc, .xls, http://, etc.
> >>>>Is there no package which can fix the file associations for FF and TB ?
> >>>
> >>>That's likely some xdg stuff. It usually works using gnome, KDE and xfce
> >>>but nothing else. KDE probably has some preferences thing somewhere,
> >>>otherwise you're pretty much as f..... as everyone who doesn't use a big
> >>>DE. Hurray for 'Desktop Integration'..
> >>
> >>I don't think so.
> >>xdg-settings --list gives on default-web-browser.
> >
> >You can't use xdg-settings when you don't have one of the major DEs
> >running, xdg-open falls back to a hardcoded array of browsers in that
> >case. It's all quite awkward if you don't use gnome, kde or xfce.
> >I know, doesn't really help with your problem..
> 
> I found thunderbird asking me for a program to execute for links.
> Pointed it to the right program and told it to remember. Never asked
> again. I wouldn't know where to change it if I ever wanted, but it's
> been working so far, and I don't use a DE.
> 

xdg-open for non-DE users is annoying but possible. I spent an evening
reading the source (it's just a bash script anyway).

When no DE stuff is present it falls back to some application.list file
which associates mimetypes with .desktop files. The list and .desktop
files are searched for in /usr/share/applications globally and
~/.local/share/applications on a per user basis.

There's also xdg-open commands to add/remove associations and .desktop
files to/from the list.

No match found for a mimetype and we fall back on $BROWSER.

At least that's how I remember it all working, I haven't looked in quite
some time.

I hear you can also install mimeo or some other Xyne-tool which will
override all this and make it work better.

-- 
patrick brisbin