Prevent calibre making itself default app for unassigned document types

[porphyry5]

arch linux

When calibre installs, it sets itself as the default app for any type of document that does not have a default app already set for it. How do I cancel/prevent that feature. I do not want calibre to be the default for any type of document. Thank you for your help.

[eschwartz]

You should probably complain to the freedesktop people.

All calibre does is install *.desktop files for the GUI applications it offers.
`update-desktop-database` is responsible for reporting on available file associations, and also for randomly setting defaults.
This has nothing to do with calibre and everything to do with Linux standards for mimeinfo.

Somewhat related recent discussion: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3299856

[porphyry5]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You should probably complain to the freedesktop people.

All calibre does is install *.desktop files for the GUI applications it offers.
`update-desktop-database` is responsible for reporting on available file associations, and also for randomly setting defaults.
This has nothing to do with calibre and everything to do with Linux standards for mimeinfo.

Somewhat related recent discussion: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3299856

Thanks for the info. I recall there was a flurry about mime-types a few years back that resulted in firefox starting up on virtually every other kind of file (still does, actually). Sigh, pcs reached their apogee in the 90s and its been all downhill into over-elaboration ever since.

[eschwartz]

Heck, there's gotta be some sort of reason why so many people write their own drop-in replacements for xdg-open.

I actually find myself in the unlikely position of envying Windows for prompting you on new filetypes.
Don't worry though -- Windows still has its own file association mess.

...

Assuming you have something else capable of opening said files (or default to gvim or something ???) you can use mimeo (from Xyne's repo) to quickly set file associations in bulk.
As long as you have something in your user mimeapps.list then it doesn't matter what the system mimeinfo.cache says. By which I mean the irritating statement:

The order of the desktop files found for a MIME type is not significant. Therefore, an external mechanism must be used to determine what is the preferred desktop file for a MIME type.