Thomas Adam <tho...@xteddy.org> writes: > On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 06:45:03PM -0500, des...@verizon.net wrote: >> Thomas Adam <tho...@xteddy.org> writes: >> >> > On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 12:09:25AM +0100, Nathan Huesken wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> >> >> When I use chromium under Xfce4, it opens pdf files using evince. When I >> >> use chromium under fvwm, it opens pdfs using firefox (which opens pdfs >> >> using evince, but is started and takes long to start). >> >> >> >> I am not sure, if this is really a fvwm thing, but it is my only guess. >> >> Maybe someone in the list knows ... >> > >> > Read up on how mailcap entries work. Nothing to do with FVWM. >> >> Desktop environments are messing up what used to be a well defined >> boundary between the window manager and X. >> >> On my Fedora system, /etc/mailcap contains: >> >> audio/*; /usr/bin/xdg-open %s >> image/*; /usr/bin/xdg-open %s >> application/msword; /usr/bin/xdg-open %s >> application/pdf; /usr/bin/xdg-open %s >> application/postscript ; /usr/bin/xdg-open %s >> text/html; /usr/bin/xdg-open %s ; copiousoutput >> >> >> So, from this system's point of view, mailcap is just a thin >> layer on top of xdg-open. > > Ah yes. I'd forgotten about that. I thought this only affected > applications running under GNOME or KDE, where those frameworks offer a > means of defining known applications. For instance, unless I run > gnome-settings-daemon, I get to use .mailcap just fine. > > I can understand what the XDG are trying to do, but this seems completely > bogus, when they should be completely dependant on mailcap entries entirely, > rather than reinventing the wheel. Still, not a lot we can do about it.
We could ask the xdg folks to try the kde, gnome, or xfce tools BEFORE they resort to mailcap, etc. Then Fvwm users would be okay as long as they had one of the desktop environments installed. Given the way most linux distros are packaged, that would work better almost always. The only problem I can think of is if some of the "opens" are based on some non-standard part of the DE's WM. This reminds me of the discussion we had a while back about xdg_menu. At first I downloaded and built xdg_menu, now it's a standard part of FC11.
