Re: Helper apps / "open file with" config?

on Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 08:28:31PM +0200, Tommi Komulainen ([email protected]) wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 17:10 -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > My mime type associations appear to keep changing.
> > 
> > Currently, PDFs want to open with kghostview.  My preference is gv.
> > There are several other PDF-capable views installed.
> > 
> > The "Open file with" dialog defaults to kghostview, and lists no other
> > viewers.
> > 
> > How do I configure this?
> 
> (Please don't start commenting here how things on the Gnome desktop are
> (not) working.  desktop-devel-list is better suited for that.)

My lips are sealed.  My eyes, however.....
 
> Start Nautilus, locate a PDF file, right-click, select Properties...,
> select Open With tab, pick one.

Done.  Selected 'gv'.

I'm apparently now set to use xpdf, though I'm not sure why.
 
> Now, in order to be visible in the Open With tab (and in Galeon) an
> application must have a .desktop file.  

What package would be responsible for setting up the *.destkop file?  I
see a few bugs need filing.

Is there a user-local specific location to put these files?  Otherwise
I'm making some pretty butchered hand-edits in a system directory.

I went through this last night via IRC chat at
irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnome   Only partially successful.

> If gv doesn't come with one, you
> need to create one and run 'update-desktop-database'  The .desktop file
> must naturally contain 'MimeType=application/pdf;'-line.

Where is the *.desktop file documented?  http://www.freedesktop.org/ is
a bit broken WRT this particular page.
 
> You don't necessarily need Nautilus to select the preferred application,
> you can edit $HOME/.local/share/applications/defaults.list directly.
> (If you're using something else than the default $HOME/.local, you
> should know.)

That path doesn't exist.  Where is this documented?
 
> One "interesting" thing to know is that the web server and content
> sniffing can come up with different MIME type for the same file.
> Probably not with PDF files, but with MS Word documents some server
> announces 'application/msword' and after downloading it changes to
> 'application/vnd.ms-word'  While both are logically identical, one is an
> alias to the other, gnome-vfs can't handle it at the moment.  When you
> set the preferred handler in Nautilus (content sniffing says it's
> 'vnd.ms-word') it has no relation to the default handler you see in
> Galeon when it asks whether to open the file (which the server says is
> 'msword' instead.)  You need to manually add the 'msword' in
> defaults.list file :-/

Where?


Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <[email protected]>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    Better late than never.

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