Hi,
I cannot recall the exact explanations, but when I set up external viewers for
mutt I found that I had to use a program called `mutt_bgrun` that would detach
the started viewers. It creates a temporary directory, copies the file into it
and opens the viewer on that copy. It works flawlessly, only HTML attachments
opened in Firefox do not reload. You may find mg_bgrun attached. Don't forget
to make it executable after placing it somewhere.
In order to make use of it, I have a `mailcap` file residing in `.mutt`, which
specifies how a number of file types should be opened. Instead of using
the viewer directly, one has to prefix the command line with the path to
`mutt_bgrun`. Due to lazyness I attach my complete `mailcap` file and not some
excerpt.
In order to make use of this `mailcap`, you need to add
set mailcap_path = "~/.mutt/mailcap"
to your `muttrc`.
That should be it.
Best,
Max Görner
#!/bin/sh
# @(#) mutt_bgrun $Revision: 1.4 $
# mutt_bgrun - run an attachment viewer from mutt in the background
# Copyright (C) 1999-2002 Gary A. Johnson
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
# SYNOPSIS
# mutt_bgrun viewer [viewer options] file
#
# DESCRIPTION
# Mutt invokes external attachment viewers by writing the
# attachment to a temporary file, executing the pipeline specified
# for that attachment type in the mailcap file, waiting for the
# pipeline to terminate, writing nulls over the temporary file,
# then deleting it. This causes problems when using graphical
# viewers such as qvpview and acroread to view attachments.
#
# If qvpview, for example, is executed in the foreground, the mutt
# user interface is hung until qvpview exits, so the user can't do
# anything else with mutt until he or she finishes reading the
# attachment and exits qvpview. This is especially annoying when
# a message contains several MS Office attachments--one would like
# to have them all open at once.
#
# If qvpview is executed in the background, it must be given
# enough time to completely read the file before returning control
# to mutt, since mutt will then obliterate the file. Qvpview is
# so slow that this time can exceed 20 seconds, and the bound is
# unknown. So this is again annoying.
#
# The solution provided here is to invoke the specified viewer
# from this script after first copying mutt's temporary file to
# another temporary file. This script can then quickly return
# control to mutt while the viewer can take as much time as it
# needs to read and render the attachment.
#
# EXAMPLE
# To use qvpview to view MS Office attachments from mutt, add the
# following lines to mutt's mailcap file.
#
# application/msword; mutt_bgrun qvpview %s
# application/vnd.ms-excel; mutt_bgrun qvpview %s
# application/vnd.ms-powerpoint; mutt_bgrun qvpview %s
#
# AUTHOR
# Gary A. Johnson
# <garyj...@spk.agilent.com>
#
# ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
# My thanks to the people who have commented on this script and
# offered solutions to shortcomings and bugs, especially Edmund
# GRIMLEY EVANS <edmu...@rano.org> and Andreas Somogyi
# <a...@somogyi.nu>.
prog=${0##*/}
# Check the arguments first.
if [ "$#" -lt "2" ]
then
echo "usage: $prog viewer [viewer options] file" >&2
exit 1
fi
# Separate the arguments. Assume the first is the viewer, the last is
# the file, and all in between are options to the viewer.
viewer="$1"
shift
while [ "$#" -gt "1" ]
do
options="$options $1"
shift
done
file=$1
# Create a temporary directory for our copy of the temporary file.
#
# This is more secure than creating a temporary file in an existing
# directory.
umask 077
tmpdir=$(mktemp -d --tmpdir)
[ -d "$tmpdir" ] || exit 1
tmpfile="$tmpdir/${file##*/}"
# Copy mutt's temporary file to our temporary directory so that we can
# let mutt overwrite and delete it when we exit.
cp "$file" "$tmpfile"
# Run the viewer in the background and delete the temporary files when done.
(
"$viewer" $options "$tmpfile"
rm -f "$tmpfile"
rmdir "$tmpdir"
) &
text/html; ~/.local/bin/firefox/firefox %s &>/dev/null %s; test=test -n
"$DISPLAY"
text/html; w3m -I %{charset} -T text/html -dump %s; copiousoutput
text/calendar; khal import %s; needsterminal
text/calendar; khal printics %s; copiousoutput
text/x-vcalendar; khal import %s; needsterminal
text/x-vcalendar; khal printics %s; copiousoutput
application/ics; khal import %s; needsterminal
application/ics; khal printics %s; copiousoutput
application/pdf; ~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun zathura %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
image/*; ~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun eog --new-instance %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/vnd.ms-excel; ~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun localc %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation; ~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun loimpress
%s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text; ~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun lowriter %s;
test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation;
~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun loimpress %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet;
~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun localc %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document;
~/.mutt/mutt_bgrun lowriter %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
