On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 02:29:00PM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote: > > >> On Sep 19, 2013, at 4:25 PM, Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+li...@gmail.com> > >> 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. Cheers, -- Suvayu Open source is the future. It sets us free.
