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

[Michael Biebl]

Am 07.09.18 um 09:07 schrieb Josh Triplett:
> 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).

/etc/mailcap is very unflexible in that regard and I'm not sure it's
fixable.
Maybe a better solution would be if tools moved away from using
/etc/mailcap. Could mutt be taught to use xdg-open?


-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?

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