Arch Linux

Sloshy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-15

Posts: 56

[GNOME], [Firefox] (still) defaults to GIMP for PDF files

I've installed Arch Linux with GNOME twice this past year, on both i686 and x86-64 systems. Both times, I've installed GNOME with it's default PDF reader, Evince, as well as GIMP for image editing (of course). Firefox, regardless of my preferences in Nautilus, only gives me the option of opening PDF files in GIMP (as opposed to saving them). If I save the file and open it from the downloads window, it opens in GIMP, but if I download it and then open it directly in Nautilus, then it opens in Evince without any problems. Of course, I could work around this and simply add /usr/bin/evince to the list of programs for PDF files, but I would have to do this for every single user that I add before Firefox is reasonably usable for downloading PDFs.

There was a thread on this a while ago, but it's closed now so I can't add to it. This is still a problem in 2011 and before I report this as a bug anywhere, we'd have to figure out the exact cause of the problem: is it GNOME, GIMP, Firefox, or something else entirely that causes this? How could I fix this so I don't have to use a messy workaround?

Oh, also, after installing GIMP, it's treated as the default application for PDF files regardless of GNOME's default preferences. Evince is listed but GIMP "hijacks" it in a sense. This is fixable in Nautilus easily, but it shouldn't have to be a necessary step.

Last edited by Sloshy (2011-02-22 20:24:09)

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,356

Re: [GNOME], [Firefox] (still) defaults to GIMP for PDF files

mimeopen would solve the problem. The issue is that firefox just defaults to using xdg-specifications, and gnome isn't really very good about setting that (uses its own gnome-open instead of xdg-open after all).

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tjwoosta

Member

Registered: 2008-12-18

Posts: 453

Re: [GNOME], [Firefox] (still) defaults to GIMP for PDF files

I dont know if this is what your talking about but..

In firefox go to edit>preferences> applications tab (you can choose which app opens what filetypes)

Sloshy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-15

Posts: 56

Re: [GNOME], [Firefox] (still) defaults to GIMP for PDF files

mimeopen would solve the problem. The issue is that firefox just defaults to using xdg-specifications, and gnome isn't really very good about setting that (uses its own gnome-open instead of xdg-open after all).

I never knew that about GNOME. Mimeopen did fix the problem for me. Thanks very much!

I dont know if this is what your talking about but..

In firefox go to edit>preferences> applications tab (you can choose which app opens what filetypes)

I mentioned that I tried this and it works fine, but I don't want to have to do that workaround on every single account I make. The workaround suggested, as I said, works well enough.

So if I understand this correctly, this is a Firefox bug?