Calibre associated with every filetype?!

[sej7278]

How is Calibre setting up its file associations on Linux, as I'd really like to undo them all and just associate with .epub and .mobi

At the moment it seems to associate itself with all filetypes - from .txt to .rb and even CHECKSUM files!

I've seen a related issue on Gentoo, but this is Fedora and I'm using the binary installer not a package:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...8-start-0.html

[sej7278]

seems there's a shedload of entries in /usr/local/share/applications/defaults.list and various .desktop files in that directory which are causing the problem.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre does not associate itself with anything, what it does is tell your OS that it is capable of handling a set of mimetypes, as you will see in the calibre*.desktop files. After that, what application the OS associates with each mimetype is up to it. You need to find out how to edit those associations for the programs/desktop environments you use.

[sej7278]

well its pretty much the same thing!

i fixed it by removing all the mimetypes except the mobi/epub ones from the calibre*.desktop files and defaults.list and running update-mime-database

i'm still not sure how calibre and ebook-viewer was listed as a mimetype handler for almost every format i tested - probably had text/plain or application/binary in there somewhere....

[user_none]

Originally Posted by sej7278

i'm still not sure how calibre and ebook-viewer was listed as a mimetype handler for almost every format i tested - probably had text/plain or application/binary in there somewhere....

Calibre and the ebook-veiwer support a large number of formats. Plain text is a supported format.

[sej7278]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

calibre does not associate itself with anything, what it does is tell your OS that it is capable of handling a set of mimetypes, as you will see in the calibre*.desktop files. After that, what application the OS associates with each mimetype is up to it. You need to find out how to edit those associations for the programs/desktop environments you use.

can we make it so this isn't the default behaviour?

i get fed up of editing /usr/share/applications/calibre* (as well as defaults.list and mimeinfo.cache) every time i upgrade calibre.

i mean its fair enough to associate with mobi and epub files, but do you really need to become the default handler for msword, html, pdf etc?

the clean way to do it would be to allow a user to associate filetypes they want to either via their file manager (in ~/.local/share/applications) or as an option in calibre (thats not enabled by default) not try to overtake 20-odd filetypes for every user on a computer.

otherwise could you at least make it so that calibre adds its entries to the end of the mimetypes and not the start, so it doesn't override other handlers that are already setup - for instance taking over from libreoffice as the default msword handler or chrome as the default html handler?

[jgaiser]

I'm curious what distribution you're using. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 and Calibre definitely does not change the mime types for either msword files, html files or txt files. All are opened in the correct, appropriate applications.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by sej7278

can we make it so this isn't the default behaviour?

As already stated this isn't the default behavior.

Originally Posted by sej7278

i get fed up of editing /usr/share/applications/calibre* (as well as defaults.list and mimeinfo.cache) every time i upgrade calibre.

I would be fed up too. It will be interesting to know why, on Fedora, you have to do this. I would love to hear from other Fedora users their experience.

Originally Posted by sej7278

not try to overtake 20-odd filetypes for every user on a computer.

The behavior you see on your system doesn't happen in Windows or Mac OSes and I'm willing to bet the vast majority of Linux users don't experience this behavior either.

Good Luck in identifying and getting corrected the cause of your system allowing the identifying of mime types to automatically cause an association.

[theducks]

Does not happen on Ubuntu using the Binary install

[sej7278]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I'm curious what distribution you're using. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 and Calibre definitely does not change the mime types for either msword files, html files or txt files. All are opened in the correct, appropriate applications.

for fedora, gentoo and debian this is the default behaviour for binary install.

seems like ubuntu is the only distro this isn't happening on.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by sej7278

can we make it so this isn't the default behaviour?

Once again: calibre does not set itself as the default handler for any file type, on any operating system. I absolutely detest programs that do that.

On linux calibre uses the freedesktop.org recommend tools, xdg-mime and xdg-desktop-menu to tell your desktop of the mimetypes it is capable of handling. If your desktop environment chooses to then make it the default, over your objections, then your desktop environment's implementation of xdg-mime and xdg-desktop-menu is broken, and you should open a bug report with your distro maintainers.

If you don't believe me, feel free to examine the calibre source code, the relevant portion is the function setup_desktop_integration() in src/calibre/linux.py.

[sej7278]

so do i open bug reports with fedora (13/14/15), debian (6/7) and gentoo, or just gnome (2/3) and kde4?

[kovidgoyal]

This is one of those things that requires co-operation between different projects to work. It's why it is still broken after all this time. If I were you I'd try distro level bug reports first.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by sej7278

so do i open bug reports with fedora (13/14/15), debian (6/7) and gentoo, or just gnome (2/3) and kde4?

Or switch to Ubuntu...

[theducks]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Or switch to Ubuntu...

That has to be a first (the reverse is commonly stated )
"Switch to Ubuntu because everyone else is doing it wrong!"