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michael
Asked: 2013-04-20 09:15:49 +0800 CST

How can I add 'emacs' to one of the 'Show other application' in file explorer

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In file explorer (Nautilus) under Ubuntu, I can select a file and right click and scroll to:

open with other application

My question is how can I add emacs to that list of "other application"

12.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After we had installed emacs Install emacs we may not yet have a .desktop file to integrate it with the desktop environment.

    We then can copy the emacs23.desktop file if located in /usr/share/applications or we can create a custom emacs.desktop file in ~.local/share/applications, e.g. with the following content (add further options at your needs).

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=Emacs 23
Comment=
Exec=/usr/bin/emacs23 %F
Icon=
Terminal=true
Type=Application

    We can then select Emacs in the list of "Open With Other Applications -> Show other applications" on right click of a file with a content we want to associate Emacs with.

    enter image description here

    After having selected the now present Emacs (note that there is no icon defined yet if using a custom dektop file, give the path to an icon in your emacs.desktop above) we can then choose to "Open with Emacs" in the Nautilus context menu:

    enter image description here

    To undo this we simply right click on the Emacs entry in the menu that pops up after having selected "Open With Other Application..." and say "Forget association": (Forget association option does not exist for Ubuntu 16.04 and later) enter image description here

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  2. I use emacs-snapshot available here (the latest release, good if you want to extend your environment with additional packages) and this is my ~/.local/share/applications/emacs-snapshot.desktop entry that adds files into the existing emacs instance as a new buffer instead of creating a new window every time (way faster and you can easily switch using C-x b - even cooler with IDO-mode enabled).

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=Emacs-kermit
Version=1.0
GenericName=Emacs
Comment=GNU Emacs Snapshot Client
Exec=/usr/bin/emacsclient.emacs-snapshot -a 'emacs' %F
TryExec=emacs-snapshot
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=emacs-snapshot
Categories=Development;Utility;TextEditor;
MimeType=text/plain;

    Note that for emacsclient to work, you need to have this in your ~/.emacs configuration file:

    (load "server")
(unless (server-running-p) (server-start))
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