Re: preferred app question

[Jack <ostroffjh sbcglobal net>]

On 2011.10.02 10:22, Peter Bloomfield wrote:
> Hi Jack and Ildar,
>
> On Oct  1, 2011, at 10:41 PM, Ildar Mulyukov wrote:
> > On 02.10.2011 02:51:49, Jack Ostroff (CT D8 TC) wrote:
> > > I just received an email, with an attached wmv file.  Looking at  
> > > the message parts, it shows as Windows Media video, which seems  
> > > good.  However, selecting it only offers "Open part with gmplayer"  
> > > or "Save part."
> > [...]
> > > Where should I configure this stuff?
> > This, again, is the MIME staff. And it's configured differently in  
> > different distros. Balsa just follows system settings.
> > Probably asking your distro gurus would yield better results.
> Agreed, it is all connected with mime-types.  But ISTR cases where  
> the two mechanisms offered inconsistent choices, too.  The button  
> that's shown when you select a part offers the app that is suggested  
> by g_app_info_get_default_for_type(); the right-click menu for the  
> "Message parts" tree begins with this app, and adds any other that's  
> suggested by g_app_info_get_all_for_type().
> With Nautilus, the default app is set by selecting a file of the  
> relevant type, then 'Properties':'Open with' on the context menu for  
> that file--which I find really obscure, but is apparently acceptable  
> to the UI gurus.  The other apps might be found by searching  
> *.desktop files for apps that declare that they can handle the  
> mime-type--I'm not sure.  How it's all handled with other file  
> managers is a mystery to me.
I'm replying to this ancient thread because this problem just happened  
again, and I want to record getting the solution someplace where others  
might be able to find it.
In my case, I'm running a KDE system on Gentoo, so I only have the  
absolutely minimally necessary gnome libraries installed.  I do not use  
systemd, so I actually can't use any of the Gnome UI tools, such as  
Nautilus or Gnome-control-panel (or whatever the name really is.)   
Everything had been fine, while I was using Firefox as my primary  
browser, with several others also installed.  However, I recently  
uninstalled firefox, and installed firefox-bin.  (For those who don't  
know, Gentoo is a source based distro, but sometimes it's easier to  
install a pre-compiled version.)  I suppose in order to allow one to  
have both firefox and firefox-bin installed at the same time, all  
references to those apps are different, so the -bin is not simply a  
drop-in replacement.
Symptom - when I right click on an html part in a message part list,  
firefox-bin was the first app listed.  However, clicking on any URL  
within a message opened it in Opera.  Right clicking on the link and  
selecting copy link worked, but is a nuisance, especially since I  
generally just clicked first.
Solution - after hunting through many google results, I finally was led  
to /usr/share/applications/mime.cache.  I hunted for every line  
referring to opera, and moved that reference to after any mention of  
firefox-bin.  Not sure why that worked, and similar edit to  
~/.local/share/applications/mime.cache did not, but perhaps that's just  
a quirk of my setup.
Anyway - I'm not happy again.

Jack