Re: setting default pdf viewer

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

On Mon, Mar 12 2012, Nick Dokos wrote:

> prad <prad@towardsfreedom.com> wrote:
>
>
>> here's what i found in /etc/mailcap
>> 
>> application/pdf; /usr/bin/xpdf '%s'; test=test "$DISPLAY" != ""; description=Portable Document Format; nametemplate=%s.pdf
>> 
>> application/x-pdf; /usr/bin/xpdf '%s'; test=test "$DISPLAY" != ""; description=Portable Document Format; nametemplate=%s.pdf
>> 
>> application/pdf; evince '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; nametemplate=%s.pdf
>> 
>> however, i'm not sure how to interpret this.
>> 
>
> I'm no expert but I believe that the first entry that matches wins: for
> "application/pdf" e.g. in this case, if /usr/bin/xpdf is present and
> executable and the display test succeeeds, xpdf will be used. Otherwise
> it's going to search further: if evince is present and the display test
> succeeds, evince will be used.
>
> You probably want to experiment by adding entries to ~/.mailcap, so that
> you don't mess up the system one: entries in ~/.mailcap override. I just
> have the bare minimum in mine:
>
> application/pdf; xpdf -q %s
>
> Next question: since xpdf is available and /etc/mailcap prefers it, why
> is nautilus using evince? Doesn't it use mailcap? I guess not, although
> I don't know for sure[fn:1], but it wouldn't surprise me if it did its
> own thing: there are way too many cooks in this kitchen.

I think most linux desktop environments use something like xdg-open or
gnome-open to determine defaults applications, all my defaults seem to
live in /usr/local/share/applications, which can be overridden in the
home directory. Nautilus ought to use gnome-open. I've tweaked most of
my "open-in-external-blah" functions (in dired and gnus, for example) to
use xdg-open, so the same defaults are used in all my applications,
including emacs.

-- 
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 of 2012-03-06 on pellet
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