Recently I had a need to set xpdf as the default program for opening pdf files instead of evince. I decided to use the command line to achieve this. Turns out that I can do this using xdg-mime.
To know what is the filetype (in the mime 'language') of pdf files:
Once I know the mime type of pdf files, I can see the default program currently used to open pdf files:
So, now I know that evince is being used as the default pdf file opener, and that there is a desktop file by the name of evince.desktop. The location of this file can easily be found using programs like 'locate':
Now I know where such desktop files are kept on my system. After installing xpdf, xpdf.desktop also turned up there (if not it is easy to create such a desktop file). So now I can make xpdf as the default program for opening pdf files using the following:
That's it. Now if I try to click on a pdf file, xpdf is used to open it.
To know what is the filetype (in the mime 'language') of pdf files:
$ xdg-mime query filetype Programming.pdf
application/pdf
Once I know the mime type of pdf files, I can see the default program currently used to open pdf files:
$ xdg-mime query default application/pdf
evince.desktop
So, now I know that evince is being used as the default pdf file opener, and that there is a desktop file by the name of evince.desktop. The location of this file can easily be found using programs like 'locate':
$ locate /evince.desktop
/usr/share/applications/evince.desktop
Now I know where such desktop files are kept on my system. After installing xpdf, xpdf.desktop also turned up there (if not it is easy to create such a desktop file). So now I can make xpdf as the default program for opening pdf files using the following:
$ xdg-mime default xpdf.desktop application/pdf
That's it. Now if I try to click on a pdf file, xpdf is used to open it.
No comments:
Post a Comment