On Sep 20, 2013, at 1:07 PM, Suvayu Ali wrote: > Hi Carsten, > > On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 12:49:43PM +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 >> >> Hi Suvayu, >> >> interesting! How does this work? Is this setting an environment variable DE before it is run? >> The syntax looks unfamiliar to me. > > Yes, it is setting the DE variable (internal to xdg-open) to generic. > You can temporarily alter the environment of a command by prefixing it > with `var=value '. The cool thing is the current shell does not retain > the temporary value. Here is an example: > > $ var=foo > $ var=bar sh -c 'echo $var' > bar > $ echo $var > foo 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? - Carsten > > :) > > -- > Suvayu > > Open source is the future. It sets us free.