On 01/13/2017 09:19 AM, Guenter Milde wrote:
IMV, using xdg-mime query seems the right way but not easy.
Maybe you can open an enhancement ticket.
tl;dr
I'm now having second thoughts about it. I discovered xdg-mime returns
incorrect information on my laptop (including naming applications that
are no longer installed). As noted here
<https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=201728>, the problem seems
to be that xdg-utils programs focus on
~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list and ignore
~/.config/mimeapps.list (which I think is supposed to take precedence).
I don't know why Linux distributions store MIME associations in so many
different places, but in any event we apparently can't count on xdg-mime
to find the correct associations, and there is no painless way for a
user to fix that (at least none that I can find). My laptop has a MIME
type editor, but it shows the correct associations (presumably meaning
those in ~/.config) and has no provision for tracking down and deleting
associations in other obscure locations.
There's an alternative to xdg-open, namely gvfs-open, that seems to do a
better job of reading the correct MIME association list. Unfortunately,
where xdg-open defaults to Firefox (or whatever the default browser is?)
on an unrecognized file type, gvfs-open on my PC tried to open a binary
file (proprietary format, no MIME association) with Libre Office, which
expectedly did not go well. So I'm hesitant to suggest setting gvfs-open
as the default for unknown MIME types.
A possibility is to have the script run 'gvfs-mime --query <MIME type>'
and extract the default program from the first line of the return value
(or ascertain that no default is set). Given the way xdg-mime blew up in
my face, though, I'd like to hear from others before making a formal
recommendation. In particular, since both my systems run Linux Mint, I
have no idea how ubiquitous gvfs-mime is in other distributions.
Paul
