Arch Linux

Pyke

Member

From: Aarhus, DK

Registered: 2003-10-22

Posts: 10

Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

I installed the new Gnome 2.8 during the weekend and now my file type associations is completely bloated. The mime system is intact - Nautilus recognises files properly. However, Nautilus doesn't know which applications to open a specific file with. I have read other posts and found useful information, but not the solution.

This post in FedoraForum gave me a hint to what's causing the problem:

http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread … post127530

It seems that the file defaults.list is missing from /usr/share/mime/applications. Apparently this file contains the associations  between applications and mime types. I have not be able to find out which package should provide this file or how to recreate it. Can anyone help - maybe provide the name of the package that provides this file?

Thanks,

Pyke

Member

From: Aarhus, DK

Registered: 2003-10-22

Posts: 10

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

Couldn't someone check if they have the file and if yes, then do a pacman -Qo on it to see which package owns it? I would very much like to know if the file should be there and which package owns it. That would be a starting point for solving this irritating problem.

Thanks,
Pyke

Moo-Crumpus

Member

From: Hessen / Germany

Registered: 2003-12-01

Posts: 1,487

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

submit a bug report, contact package maintainer, please. No one knows but him, I guess.

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Frumpus ♥ addict
[mu'.krum.pus], [frum.pus]

Pyke

Member

From: Aarhus, DK

Registered: 2003-10-22

Posts: 10

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

How should I know which package maintainer to contact, when I do not know which package the file belongs to???

Please, couldn't someone do as I asked in the 2nd post. Just check if the file is on your system and do a pacman -Qo on it if it is. It'll take you only 20 seconds....

Thanks - again :-)

segmental

Member

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 51

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

In my system there is the folder /usr/share/applications
that is full of .desktop files, and the folder
/usr/share/mime/application that is full of .xml files.

There is no defaults.list in either.

smarcher

Member

From: Calcutta

Registered: 2003-12-12

Posts: 42

Website

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

Same for me.

kpiche

Forum Fellow

From: Ottawa, ON, Canada

Registered: 2004-03-30

Posts: 246

Website

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

Yeah, I got tired of Evolution not knowing about opening *.docs in openoffice.  After several hours of research, the key is the /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache,  /opt/gnome/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache, and the MimeType fields in the *.desktop files.  The mimeinfo.cache in /usr was empty and the /opt one had gthumb and other apps but no OO:

[MIME Cache]
application/x-gnome-stones=gnome-stones.desktop
image/jpeg=gthumb.desktop
application/postscript=ggv.desktop
...snip...

That's a lot of blather to say that the fix for Evolution/OpenOffice was to add the proper MimeType entry to /usr/share/applications/ooo645writer.desktop:

MimeType=application/vnd.ms-word;application/msword

and then run "update-desktop-database".  Problem solved.

Another problem is that within Evolution it says an attached doc is a "application/msword" and not a "Microsoft Word Document".  Unfortunately this is because freedesktop.org decided to use application/vnd.ms-word instead of application/msword like the rest of the world.  If you check the vnd.ms-word entry in /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml it defines an alias msword but the new mime system doesn't appear to recognize aliases yet.  The solution I used was to rename the entry to msword.  Another possible solution might be to remove the msword alias from the vnd.ms-word entry and create a new msword entry based on the vnd.ms-word one.  Then run "update-mime-database /usr/share/mime".  Hope that made sense.

I think the defaults.list is part of the previous GNOME MIME setup cause I don't have one and I'm not experiencing any problems.  For other apps check for the associations in the mimeinfo.cache's and if missing add the MimeType's to the app's *.desktop.

Moo-Crumpus

Member

From: Hessen / Germany

Registered: 2003-12-01

Posts: 1,487

Re: Gnome: mime types, file associations and defaults.list

How should I know which package maintainer to contact, when I do not know which package the file belongs to???

Arjan Timmerman is package maintainer for gnome-mime-data 2.4.2-1, as for most (all?) gnome packages. This is a mime prob, so I would first ask him how this one was replaced during migration to gnome 2.8.

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Frumpus ♥ addict
[mu'.krum.pus], [frum.pus]