On 22.9.2013, at 10:49, Suvayu Ali wrote: > Hi Matt, > >> On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Matt Price wrote: >>> On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 9:14 AM, Suvayu Ali wrote: >>>> On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 02:29:00PM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>> On Sep 19, 2013, at 4:25 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I have some good news (sort of). We can force generic open by calling >>>>>>>> xdg-open like this[1]: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> DE=generic xdg-open /path/to/file >>>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> OK, this sounds useful. >>>>> Next question: Maybe people who *are* on a Desktop environment will not like it if we force DE=generic onto them as well? >>>>> Or would't that make a difference? >>>> >>>> I did some quick searching, this part is a bit murky. The generic way >>>> of setting up default application associations with mime types is >>>> through desktop files and ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list. >>>> >>>> Now XFCE and xdg-open both use this, I do not think this is true for >>>> KDE, Gnome, or Gnome-like DEs though. So for desktops that have their >>>> own config system, it is possible xdg-open's generic and the desktop >>>> specific preference might not match. >>>> >>>> Some testing by other desktop users might be useful here. Maybe Matt >>>> and Glyn can help here (CC'ed). >>>> >>>> To test: >>>> 1. open directory with pdf/html/odt files in dired, >>>> 2. put point on one of these files, >>>> 2. run asynchronous shell command: `& DE=generic xdg-open RET'. >>>> >>>> Does it start your prefered application? If not, we should drop this >>>> idea. If yes, maybe it is worth it. >>> >>> >>> huh, I just tried it on a pdf file and an odt file, and nothing >>> opened;vI just got a message that the process had finished, and an >>> empty new Async Shell Command buffer. Is it possible I'm using a >>> nonstandard xdg-open or something, or that the problem is otherwise >>> related to my system? This is on ubuntu 13.-4, running unity. > > I'm not sure what is going wrong there. That said, all this seems > rather fragile. The bug with gvfs-open has been there for over 3 years, > and I don't think there is even a bug-report open for exo-open. It's > probably best to drop the idea for now. Too bad, but true. We will drop it for now, until there is a better and more robust idea. - Carsten