Mime types

[Thomas Worthington]

Since 11.00 Opera can not open ANY files other than a few such as .html
and .txt The others - PDF, Word, Excel etc. - cause it to launch something
called xdg-open which then opens Firefox, which then passes the file to
the correct application. This is less than efficient.

Anyone know what to do about it, other than manually defining all my
helper programs from scratch? Where is FF getting the correct information
from, for a start?

TW

[Whiskers]

Post by Thomas Worthington
Since 11.00 Opera can not open ANY files other than a few such as .html
and .txt The others - PDF, Word, Excel etc. - cause it to launch something
called xdg-open which then opens Firefox, which then passes the file to
the correct application. This is less than efficient.
Anyone know what to do about it, other than manually defining all my
helper programs from scratch? Where is FF getting the correct information
from, for a start?
TW

Somehow I seem to have managed not to encounter 'xdg-open' before, so your
question piqued my interest. Looks as though someone re-invented
'metamail' but with added complications ~:-\

This looks like the 'official' way to get it doing what you want;
unfortunately rather indirect
<http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2008-11/msg01708.html>

[Thomas Worthington]

Thanks, that seems to have worked. Still don't know why FF knew what to
use, though. Moot point now, however.

TW

Post by Whiskers

Post by Thomas Worthington
Since 11.00 Opera can not open ANY files other than a few such as .html
and .txt The others - PDF, Word, Excel etc. - cause it to launch something
called xdg-open which then opens Firefox, which then passes the file to
the correct application. This is less than efficient.
Anyone know what to do about it, other than manually defining all my
helper programs from scratch? Where is FF getting the correct
information
from, for a start?
TW

Somehow I seem to have managed not to encounter 'xdg-open' before, so your
question piqued my interest. Looks as though someone re-invented
'metamail' but with added complications ~:-\
This looks like the 'official' way to get it doing what you want;
unfortunately rather indirect
<http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2008-11/msg01708.html>

[Whiskers]

[...]

Post by Thomas Worthington

Post by Whiskers
Somehow I seem to have managed not to encounter 'xdg-open' before, so your
question piqued my interest. Looks as though someone re-invented
'metamail' but with added complications ~:-\
This looks like the 'official' way to get it doing what you want;
unfortunately rather indirect
<http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2008-11/msg01708.html>

Thanks, that seems to have worked. Still don't know why FF knew what to
use, though. Moot point now, however.

Glad it helped :))

Rather than Firefox 'knowing' anything, I think xdg-open probably defaults
to Firefox for anything that happens over HTTP. The choice of 'helper
program' or whatever for the mime type, only happens after that. The
default browser for xdg-open may be set by the 'desktop environment' in
use, or perhaps it varies between distros. I think it's all done with
shell scripts anyway.