Package: xdg-utils Version: 1.1.3-1 Severity: normal Control: affects -1 gimp dekstop-file-utils xapers Control: blocks 525077 by -1
different apps install .desktop files that contain a MimeType entry that includes the same mime-types. for example: 0 dkg@alice:~$ grep -l '^MimeType=.*application/pdf' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop /usr/share/applications/gimp.desktop /usr/share/applications/libreoffice-draw.desktop /usr/share/applications/mupdf.desktop /usr/share/applications/okularApplication_pdf.desktop /usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Evince.desktop /usr/share/applications/org.inkscape.Inkscape.desktop /usr/share/applications/pdf-presenter-console.desktop 0 dkg@alice:~$ Since all of these applications *can* handle a pdf file, they are all right in doing so (i believe it makes it possible for drag-and-drop to target an icon derived from the .desktop file based on the mime-type of the dragged object, for example). Then, /usr/bin/update-desktop-database (from desktop-file-utils) gathers all these together and makes a list of them in /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache. When it does so, it sorts them ASCIIbetically (for lack of any better sorting technique): https://sources.debian.org/src/desktop-file-utils/0.24-1/src/update-desktop-database.c/?hl=43#L310 Then, xdg-open reads this file and picks the first one. This means that on my system, "xdg-open foo.pdf" will launch /usr/bin/gimp. That's clearly the wrong choice. Presumably, on a desktop system like mine, a sensible priority is something like: * evince or ocular (dedicated, full-fledged pdf viewer apps) * pdf-presenter-console or mupdf (specialized custom pdf renderers) * libreoffice-draw or inkscape or gimp (apps capable of editing single pages of a pdf) The current default (having "xdg-open foo.pdf" launch gimp) is just not credible or user-friendly (as evident in the now decade-old and resolved https://bugs.debian.org/525077. It also affects new projects like xapers, which delegates opening of pdfs to xdg-open. I don't know where else these priorities should live if not in xdg-utils. In the absence of some more sensible distributed priority system, i think xdg-utils needs to step up and maintain these mappings. This doesn't sound like a fun task, but it's looks like the only way for xdg-open to do a sensible thing by default, which is presumably what it is supposed to do. Thanks for maintaining xdg-utils in debian! --dkg -- Package-specific info: Desktop environment: XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP= -- System Information: Debian Release: bullseye/sid APT prefers testing-debug APT policy: (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (500, 'oldstable'), (200, 'unstable-debug'), (200, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental-debug'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 5.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) xdg-utils depends on no packages. Versions of packages xdg-utils recommends: pn libfile-mimeinfo-perl <none> ii libnet-dbus-perl 1.1.0-6 ii libx11-protocol-perl 0.56-7 ii x11-utils 7.7+4 ii x11-xserver-utils 7.7+8 xdg-utils suggests no packages. -- no debconf information
