On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 00:06:48 -0800 John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote:
> But knowing the name of the executable I was able to effect a > permanent cure by going into Edit > Preferences > Applications. I > still had to browse to /usr/bin/file-roller (no address bar to type > in), but Firefox now remembers what to use to open a .zip file. Yeah, that's how Firefox is set up. I suppose they expect the user to go through the Preferences settings and make sure that all the default executables are set to what that user wants. A bit of an annoyance, given the size of the file-types list that Firefox has, but it seems to be the way Mozilla likes it. Truth to tell, I'm not sure how else they could handle it. > The present problem is solved, but what will I do next time a program > wants to know what to open a file with and I don't know the name of > the executable? There was a recent discussion here about how dpkg / > apt / apttitude and other package managers do a lousy job of keeping > track of what is installed. I might suggest a simple text file to > which every package manager must add the name of package, the name of > the executable and its popular name; and remove same when the package > is uninstalled. I shouldn't have to wander all over the internet to > find out what programs are installed on my computer and how to launch > them. I think you want to look at the freedesktop.org site. These folks are trying to set up a scheme of specifying file-type to executable relationships. From what I've seen, there's a lot of work to be done. What they've got so far looks interesting. As for finding out which package has what file in it, the package manager should be able to tell you. On the RedHat/RPM side of things, "yum whatprovides \*/myfilename" will tell you what package contains "myfilename". There is also a "yum search ..." form which can come in handy. I'm sure that the Debian/dpkg side has something similar. Finally, I should apologize for the tone of my previous post. The sarcasm was intended for Gnome, not you. --Dale -- Welcome to the Philosopher's Diner, where all meals are ordered a la Descartes! _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
