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Asked: 2011-04-18 04:52:21 +0800 CST

Using gnome-open to open pdf files

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I configured evince to be my default application to open pdf files (using Open with... and clicking on always opening pdf files with this application), but when I type gnome-open foo.pdf instead of evince, I have Nautilus that opens up in the correct folder highlighting the file of my choice.

This is especially disturbing since I am using the LaTeX plugin for gedit, and when I try and compile a tex file to pdf, instead of opening up a new window with my compiled pdf file, I just have nautilus pop-up. I know I can edit the scripts of my gedit LaTeX plugin to call on evince (or acroread) with the pdf I want opened, but this is a workaround and not the solution I am looking for.

latex

8 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Removing exo-utils worked for me perfectly.

    • 15

  2. Forth Approach

    I could reproduce your problem by deleting this file /usr/share/applications/evince.desktop, so make sure you have this file.

    Reference.

    Third Approach

    xdg-open appears to use the configuration of /etc/mailcap. So edit it to associate pdf with evince. 

    gksu gedit /etc/mailcap

    Look for the lines that begin with application/pdf; application/x-pdf; application/x-bzpdf; application/x-gzpdf. They should look like this to associate pdf with evince: 

    application/pdf; evince '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; nametemplate=%s.pdf
application/x-pdf; evince '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; nametemplate=%s.pdf
application/x-bzpdf; evince '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; nametemplate=%s.pdf.bz2
application/x-gzpdf; evince '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; nametemplate=%s.pdf.gz

    Reference.

    Second Approach

    What is the output of 

    xdg-mime query filetype foo.pdf

    If the output isn't what we should expect, then: 

    xdg-mime default evince.desktop application/pdf

    Reference.

    First Approach

    There are other places that the file associations are set.

    You may change the files associations at:

    /usr/share/applications/defaults.list 
/usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache
~/.local/share/applications/  
~/.gnome/share/apps/

    Look for "pdf" and for "Nautilus" inside theses files.

    • 8

  3. I just ran into this problem today, and according to this thread on ubuntuforums.org, it's caused by exo-utils:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1729680

    exo-tools is a dependency of Thunar (which I installed today), but isn't normally installed in stock Ubuntu, which I guess is why they missed this bug in release.

    Removing this packaged (I actually just removed Thunar and all it's deps) fixed the problem for me.

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  4. The problem is related to exo-utils.

    1. there is a bug, which has been fixed for Ubuntu Utopic: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/956255

    2. for some reason, the following x-scheme-handler lines got copied/sticked in ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

        % grep exo ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list 
    x-scheme-handler/file=exo-file-manager.desktop
    x-scheme-handler/trash=exo-file-manager.desktop

    This caused xdg-open/gvfs-open to use /usr/share/applications/exo-file-manager.desktop, which contains:

    Exec=exo-open --launch FileManager %u

    This is the reason that even with the fixed package, it still opened Nautilus for every file.

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  5. The problem is coming from thunar and exo-utils (which is needed by thunar). Removing them solves the problem.

    • 1

  6. I had a similar issue, removing exo-utils did not work for me.

    After a little digging I found two entries for application/pdf in /etc/mailcap that were prioritizing Xpdf over evince.

    After commenting out the two entries for Xpdf, xdg-open correctly opens pdf documents with evince.

    • 1

  7. I had the same problem after installing nautilus to manage my files under Xubuntu 11.10. When I moved back to plain Ubuntu 12.04 the problem was there too.

    Simple solution if this happens ONLY to your user (close to what desgua already said): delete ~/.local/share/applications directory and everything should go back to normal. You may want to backup some shortcuts inside that directory if you want to preserve them.

    • 1

  8. Working fine for me, gnome-open opens up Adobe Reader properly. Could you try with Adobe reader once.

    Might be the case that evince is not properly set as default somewhere.

    I am using Natty BTW.

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