w3m won't use feh to open images

[Ryan Hoover]

It seems that, even though the option is set to use feh to open images, w3m will use just about any application *but* feh to do so. When I set the option to "feh", it originally used my DE's image viewer (eye of MATE). I specifically set my "Preferred Applications" to use feh as its image viewer, and no change. I then uninstalled eom completely, and now w3m opens Firefox (a private window) or sometimes GIMP (GIMP for some png files - but not always, apparently), instead.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: w3m 0.5.3-36build1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-42.45-lowlatency 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-42-lowlatency x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: MATE
Date: Sun Dec 9 16:46:09 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-12-05 (4 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-MATE 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
SourcePackage: w3m
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Hi Ryan,
that actually sounds more like a desktop file association issue hearing what it opens.

When in w3m what does your setting say.
"o" gets you to the option screen
select "External Viewer Setup" at the top

I see images formats by default (after installing w3m-img and feh) as:
feh '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY" ; description=...

I was trying to use that, but other than stopping my X11 session to death it gave me nothing.

$ sudo apt install w3m w3m-img feh
$ w3m -o auto_image=TRUE https://www.ubuntu.com/

Could you outline how exactly you are using w3m in your case?
- to configure it to show images?
- to use feh as image viewer?

Note: w3m-img and feh are both in universe

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for w3m (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]