Install/Uninstall Windows 10 calibre

[BetterRed]

I have to say I was more than a little surprised when you got calibre involved with it. I assume it was necessitated by the built in Open With - seemed to happen about the same time.

The introduction of the 'Calamities on Toast feature' has only made things worse. Apart from Sigil putting its hand up to open my PDFs, Firefox put its hand up for CBZ's - when I took up its offer, it wanted to download 'file:///users/blah blah/Downloads/picturebook.cbz' to my -- Downloads folder

BR

[kovidgoyal]

It had nothing to do with calibre's open with -- it was because there were lots of users that were confused by the new open with functionality in *windows 8+* they did not know how to get windows to open files with a program that does not appear in the initial list you get when you choose open with.

Before implementing this, I would get lots of bug reports/messages from uses asking how to open some ebook filetype with calibre or the calibre viewer from windows explorer on windows 8.

[BetterRed]

whew : I was about to ask if the new env-var would effect Open-With

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Maybe, at some time you right clicked a ZIP and selected Open With because you wanted to open it with something other than the default program. Calibre would have been in the 'open with what' list (somewhere near the top), you inadvertently selected it and didn't uncheck the use this as default box.

Yeah, that would be the most common way such a thing would happen. I'm 99% sure that wasn't it, though. Oh well, like Kovid says, it's an unholy mess, and I'll probably never find out. Made me go 'Huh?!', though, when I doubleclicked a ZIP and Calibre started importing it

[BetterRed]

@mbovenka - I can verify that calibre-debug --default-programs=unregister and setting CALIBRE_NO_DEFAULT_PROGRAMS takes care of calibre's OW offers, now I need a way to do the same for f-f-f-firefox.

BR

[kovidgoyal]

@mbovenka: IIRC the second most common way for a file association to change unexpectedly is if you install some program that associates itself with the filetype, then you uninstall it, at which point the program removes the association during the uninstall. At this juncture, windows randomly reassigns the file type to some program in the list of programs that say they are capable of handling the filetype.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@mbovenka: IIRC the second most common way for a file association to change unexpectedly is if you install some program that associates itself with the filetype, then you uninstall it, at which point the program removes the association during the uninstall. At this juncture, windows randomly reassigns the file type to some program in the list of programs that say they are capable of handling the filetype.

A-hah. It's been awhile, but I have been changing archive handlers some time ago. That may well have been it, then.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

File associations on windows are an uholy mess. There are layers and layers of places in the registry where they can be setup. Historically, they were windows explorer specific, then some time IIRC Vista or 7 they were moved to a more global location in the registry, then, in 7 there was an entirely separate layer called "Default Programs" setup. And that's just in the backend.

The mess in the backend creates an even bigger mess in the frontend -- there are literally dozens of ways in which you can change the file association for files in windows. In windows world it is *common* for end user programs to change file associations both in installers and silently in the background. And I mean change the actual association, not just register themselves as capable of handling a format.

At least on linux you just have to worry about the system default changing at random every time you rerun `update-desktop-database` on a software install/update.
But I am kind of envious that Windows now prompts you to select your own defaults rather than relying on one picked out of a hat.

I guess since Ubuntu is so user-friendly they have a curated list of user-friendly defaults and oblivious users don't have to deal with this garbage.

[kovidgoyal]

File associations are definitely a complete nightmare on Linux as well -- I think I mentioned somewhere before that I wrote my own replacement for xdg-open to work around linux's crazy system.

I think OS X has the best system. There is no central repository of associations (at least one that is intended to be accessed by installers/commonly accessed by installers). Instead each application simply declares its file type handling capabilities in its manifest and the rest is up to the OS and the user. I suspect that this happy state of affairs came about because the vast majority of software on OS X does not have installers.