Bug#908177: evince: Rename of desktop file from evince.desktop to org.gnome.Evince.desktop breaks MIME/mailcap ordering (PDFs open with gimp)

Josh Triplett josh at joshtriplett.org
Fri Sep 7 08:07:01 BST 2018


On Fri, Sep 07, 2018 at 06:22:06AM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Am 07.09.18 um 05:49 schrieb Josh Triplett:
> > Package: evince
> > Version: 3.30.0-1
> > Severity: important
> > 
> > evince 3.30 renamed the desktop file from evince.desktop to
> > org.gnome.Evince.desktop. update-mime, the tool to generate
> > /etc/mailcap, processes desktop files in order by name. Because of this
> > rename, GIMP now has a higher priority for PDF and PostScript files than
> > Evince does, causing mutt and similar to open PDF and PostScript files
> > with GIMP by default.
> 
> What would you suggest should be done about this?
> Renaming the desktop file back to evince.desktop is not really an option.

I'm not proposing that (though I'm curious what makes that particularly
painful). We need *some* solution though. That this happened to work
out of the box before was effectively a coincidence based on "evince"
sorting before "gimp".

I don't know what the *ideal* solution looks like.

One short-term approach would be to introduce some kind of simplistic priority
scheme in desktop files via an X- header that update-mime reads, and
have evince and/or GIMP use that (and perhaps declare a Breaks for older
mime-support).  Effectively, this would introduce a concept of "this
application supports this MIME type but should never end up as the
primary tool a user wants to use to open it", versus "it's plausible
that this could be the primary tool a user uses to open this MIME type".
That would solve the problem of ending up with something like GIMP as
the primary PDF opener, though it doesn't solve the long-term issue of
ending up with the wrong tool for your preferred environment (e.g.
evince vs okular).



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