“[…] I learned about Dropline Gnome, an optimized Gnome installation for Slackware. […] Anyway, the upshot was that my Gnome system was upgraded, my personal settings were retained but my Open Office file associations were broken. I could no longer open documents in Nautilus with an Open Office application.” Read the tutorial at Linux-Universe.
Gnome 2.4 and File Associations
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I couldn’t find a way to define how a certain file should be started through the GUI in Nautilus. Only some predefined programs but I couldn’t find a way to define my own program.
I found the exact opposite to be the case. I upgraded from Gnome 2.2 to 2.4, and suddenly double clicking on Abiword docs (*.abw) launched OpenOffice for me. I had to select Choose Other (I think it’s called) and then change the file associations for this type, back to Abiword. Pretty odd, but that’s the only quirk I’ve noticed with the Gnome upgrade. Seems pretty happy otherwise. BTW, running Gentoo on x86 architecture, if it matters:)
BTW, running Gentoo on x86 architecture, if it matters:)
It does. People must know how good Gentoo is.
I have Gnome 2.4 on my system, but never use it. Upgraded it from Gnome 2.2 only cause I hated seeing all those undone upgrades when I emerge -Up world’ed.
Think I’ll take a peek at it tomorrow…
Maybe…
Been using it ever since it was out, when it was still “unstable”. i’m a bit disappointed, since there’s no real change. Not even a cool new theme. I’m glad you can get some on art.gnome.org.
now if Nvidia could decide to stop releasing pooched drivers i would be an happy camper.
Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Advanced -> File types and programs
will allow you to define what program to open what kind of file. Me too after upgrading to gnome 2.4 it didn’t open .doc with open office, so I went and changed it from there (Default action: “custom” then find the sword binary file, like /usr/local/OpenOffice.org1.1.0/program/sword)
Are the file associations based on filename extensions or file type {mime?}?
I do not like the way Microsoft Windows handles associations.
In the next release, they will switch to this
http://freedesktop.org/Standards/shared-mime-info-spec
And if we’re lucky, they’ll also figure out a bookmark standard, too!
-Erwos
Isn’t a desktop environment unmare if you still have to struggle with stuff like this yourself?
Useful article, in regards to system-wide changes, but there is a simpler way
right click on file, choose other application, see if your chosen app is listed, but has not shown in menu.
If not choose the button “go there” under file types and programs.
Then fill in the dialogue, adding a new default program. Then exit and repeat to set the default back, but the program you added will still be available.
Its a lot simpler doing than writing.
And if we’re lucky, they’ll also figure out a bookmark standard, too!
take a look at the specifications list, and you will se The XML Bookmark Exchange Language, or XBEL, is an Internet “bookmarks” interchange format.
http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/xbel/
Some browsers (konqueror, galeon,…) implement it already.
If mozilla implement it (there is an open bug at this subject), we will be able not only to import/export our bookmarks, but to _share_ them.
PS: freedesktop.org rulez
There are still no gnome 2.4 packages for debian sid. Anyone know of some unofficial ones?
BTW, running Gentoo on x86 architecture, if it matters:)
It does. People must know how good Gentoo is.
For the last time: people DO KNOW! How wouldn’t they?! You gentooers keep sharing it, post after post after post! Judging by the times i see “i use gentoo”, “gentoo rocks”, “emerge bla bla”, i’d say that gentoo is more used than red hat and mandrake and suse fucking together! ARGH!#$@ Why are you guys so ANOYING?! argh!
on-topic: dropline gnome rocks. it comes all pretty and nice, just out of the box. you guys outta try it (except the ones wainting for a gentoo package, ‘course.)
Not a very usefull article if you ask me, it’s easily done by right clicking and choose other program. It’s like going to Rome when you stand right in front of it. Yet he decides to do it the hard way, and walk around the entire world.
But I do agree that the Gnome help currently sucks. It doesn’t look “flashy” enough. It should use alot more graphics and alot more animation/wizard etc. But Im not actually a person that uses gnome help alot, my favorite help is Google…
Just on a side note: I use Gentoo and it works like a charm.
:P. Have had some trouble using it, but that was my own stupidness. Using ebuilds from breakmygentoo.net and messing around with init can be very bad…
while the Freedesktop stuff is normally fantastic, that specification for mime types doesn’t have user preferences, just system ones… However the “KDE people” are asking for inheritance, does this mean global preferences overidden by user ones, or grouping mime types together, ie. all text/* open by kate (for example) but text/ascii open by gvim (bad example, I know) ?
Recently I have tried Slackware 9.1 with Dropline Gnome too. I don’t think it’s a wonder that Gnome behaves bad… there are so many bugs in (Dropline) Gnome! Within two days I found the following bugs, and switched back to KDE:
– Upgrade to 2.4 didn’t work well: start-here:/// still worked, clicking “Desktop Preferences” in this *built-in* Nautilus folder only displayed an error message.
– fonts:///, start-here:/// and so on only work from within Nautilus, not from the Run Application-dialog.
– FTP support sucks: you have to type ftp://username:password@host/ to get access to password-protected FTP servers
– Buttons in Epiphany still don’t follow the Gnome look&feel
– After Ctrl-Alt-Backspace GNOME didn’t shutdown preventing me from logging in again.
– After Epiphany crashed for the third time, it refused to start up anymore
– The sound recorder immediately quits with a “Fatal Error”
– Evolution with IMAP doesn’t work well: it just displays a large list of “empty” list items, while clicking one does show the “corresponding” mail
– XMMS is still GTK+1
For the test, I hope that with the next FreeDesktop standard, I don’t get KATE windows in Gnome or GEdit windows in KDE when I click a text file, e.g. I think they should include a possibility to take other actions depending on the DE being used.
The “Shared Desktop” is a good example: while KDE icons do show up in Gnome (and the other way around), icons from the “other” DE are still those of an unknown applications, well, in most cases, sometimes it does work…
Hey Dan,
Maybe all your probs stem from the fact that Dropline is meant for Slackware 9.0 and not the latest Slackware. Have been using it on 9.0 for some time now and absolutely no probs. People have said that theyve got it to work on 9.1 but I havent upgraded my 9.1install until i get an official 9.1 installer. I dunno but maybe changes in gcc and glibc between versions in Slac may have something to do with it.
Peace out.
It would probably work anywhere else but others like me have found with standard Slackware 9.x and Dropline Gnome that the local editing just did not work. The first fault was with RealPlayer installation – a few people seem to have had that problem judging from forum questions. Using the “Program to run” selection would accept the full path to the application but wouldn’t run the program. When you rechecked the configuration, it had removed the path and changing everything to be in the PATH did not seem a particularly robust approach to trying to solve the problem.
So perhaps there is an editing bug with the distributions being used. The same occurred for Open Office after the upgrade to Dropline Gnome.
It’s well and good if it all works, but YMMV for the distribution. This walkthrough is for those who might have a broken editing system. At least you will know what occurs when you install your applications, what might go wrong and where to look to fix it.
It’s fairly stable on my system Slackware 9.1. I use it day in – day out. Apart from the file actions problem nothing has ever crashed. It has been upgraded to work with Slackware 9.1. There were a few issues with XMMS early on but it has been patched. There is still a problem with using Gorilla and Industrial because they apparently rely on GTK 1.2 which isn’t present in Slackware 9.1. I believe they are working on a new bundle for that but I’m leery of adding older libraries back in to the system.
For the test, I hope that with the next FreeDesktop standard, I don’t get KATE windows in Gnome or GEdit windows in KDE when I click a text file, e.g. I think they should include a possibility to take other actions depending on the DE being used.
well, just read the first page of the specification
The system does not provide a system for storing user preferences (Bob likes to view text/html files in Mozilla).
This makes sense.
Anonymous: aha. That makes sense. indeed.
For the rest, thost problems don’t seem to have anything to do with the Slackware version, as they already occured before I upgraded from 9.0 to 9.1. Additionally, Dropline manages so many packages (even XFree86) that I would almost believe the Slackware version doesn’t even matter anything at all.
But still this can be a handy article.
Becase Gentoo is a relativly young distro and ppl love it – that’s why. There was a time where you could spot everywhere “aptget bla” rox, debian is cool, etc.. now it’s gentoo time. Don’t get nervous.. it will pass… (or maybe not?)
btw: gentoo rox!!! ;>
RE:<<I upgraded from Gnome 2.2 to 2.4, and suddenly double clicking on Abiword docs (*.abw) launched OpenOffice for me.>>
clicking on files like this in a file manager is a very WindozeISH way of doing things, you would not have this problem with filetypes if you simply launched the desired applcation first and use the menu/open [ctrl + o] option instead…
Yes, “a very WindozeISH way of doing things”, however it is also a way of doing something that makes a lot of sense, you don’t need to think about what you want to open the file in, you just open the file, if you want something other than the default behaviour you can have that too. But in most cases the default is good.
RE:<you don’t need to think about what you want to open the file in,>
not a good philosophy…
and can be downright destructive to data on a Windoze box (viruses & worms come to mind) (whats that icon do [click] shazam Uh-oh)…
Err… there is a difference between opening a file you want to open for a reason, and just randomly clicking on icons you know.
And it could be equally as destructive on any OS, not just windows if you didn’t know what you are doing.
As long as Gnome, KDE, or any other DE will let individual users on one system choose what application they want to run then Windows styled associations will be ok. Microsoft Windows has given two people I know headaches because one of them likes OpenOffice.org and Mozilla while the other guy likes MS Word and Internet Explorer. One of these people have to open the application first then the document.
When you double click on a media file such as .mp3 or .pdf, a player or viewer application pops up instead of an editor. Compare that to text and document files which have associations with editors. Has there ever been a time when you really didn’t want to open an editor application because all you really wanted to do is view the file?
There was a program called QickView that I used a lot on Microsoft Windows. You could view the contents of just about any kind of file. If you decided that you wanted to edit that file, there was a button at the top called ‘Edit’ that would launch the associated editor if the file had one.
I haven’t looked hard but I haven’t seen something like that in Linux. If you use Midnight Commander, you have some of the viewing capabilities.
Would it be better if when a file is doubled clicked, a viewer or player application popped up? If you wanted to edit the file you could choose the edit button in the viewer application, right click on the file, or start the editor application the load the file. This way you will avoid accidently editing something you didn’t.
Depending on how associations are implemented, you will either have headaches or a nice working environment. Just copying the Windows Style is not a good start.
Gentoo on PIII 500 MHz, 512 MB RAM, 6 GB (OS) + 200 GB (data) disks. Yeah, its a server-station.
Anyways, I think my theme setup is very good looking and functional.
screenshot @ http://shetye.myftp.org/~ranjeet/Gnome-2.4-Desktop.png – shows “wterm -tr” and gkrellm2 running.
1. Gnome 2.4
2. Theme = gtk-engines-flat (emerge -s gtk-engines-flat)
3. Window borders = SmootS (from art.gnome.org)
4. Icons = Amaranth (theme in gnome-themes ?)
went into gconf (Applications->System Tools->Configuration Editor) and tweaked the following key “apps->metacity->general->button_layout” to “close,minimize,mazimize:menu” from “menu:minimize,mazimize,close” or whatever the default is. Now it looks just like Mac OS.
Also, I use epiphany – and its a SWEET browser.
The article describes how to make the change system wide so that all users can benefit. That’s the usefulness of the article. If one does the change from the GUI, the changes are only reflected for your user id.
IMHO, Gnome needs to make GUI’s for administering system wide things such as the menu and mime types. There should also be more documentation for developers on how to add an entry to the system wide menu when you install new software, how to remove an entry, etc…
Gnome 2.4 para debian sid agrega esto a tu sources.list
deb http://apt.bxlug.be/ gnome2.4-sid/
despues
apt-get update y apt-get -u dist-upgrade
Seguimos …
Leonel
Until GNOME gets their stuff working right I just stopped using nautilus as a file manager. I use konqueror and run startkde so I get the kicker, too. But konqueror handles my file types much better than GNOME ever did.
Hope they fix that shit cuz it sux.
Leonel, do you realise how rude it is to reply to a post in one language with one in another?* Not everyone is fortunate enough to speak more than one language.
*It’s okay here because the original post was in English.