gnome-calendar desktop file claims text/calendar mime support, but doesn't actually open such files

[John O'Meara]

release: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
package version: 3.20.4-0ubuntu0.1

Expected behavior: gnome-calendar displays text/calendar file contents OR doesn't report support for such files so that some other application will be used.

Observed behavior: gnome-calendar registers itself as supporting text/calendar files, but doesn't actually open them, at least not on launch by an external program, such as any mailcap program or Nautilus. From Nautilus, gnome-calendar never opens. From mailcap applications, gnome-calendar opens but just shows a calendar.

Additional details:

Found when using a mail client that uses mailcap to find programs to open attachments. The /etc/mailcap file claims that, to open files of type text/calendar (e.g. *.ics files), one should run 'gnome-calendar %s' replacing %s with the filename:

  text/calendar; gnome-calendar %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"

I found via tracing that this line comes from when the update-mime program parses /usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Calendar.desktop from the gnome-calendar package, which includes the line

  MimeType=text/calendar;

The actual behavior of running gnome-calendar in this way is that it ignores the file argument and just shows a calendar and does not view the file specified.

Relatedly, this desktop file also seems to result in Nautilus thinking that gnome-calendar should open a .ics file, but when opening a file via nautilus, I get an indicator showing that gnome-calendar is launching, but no window opens and the indicator eventually times out.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That's fixed in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-calendar/3.30.1-1