opening the system settings preferred application dialog breaks the defaults

[Steve Magoun]

In 11.10, gedit is the default file handler for .doc files. I expected the default handler to be libreoffice-writer, which is the default handler for .docx and other filetypes used by MS Office.

gedit is pretty bad at opening .doc files (at least the ones I've tried). The effect on the user is that double-clicking a doc-file fails to display the file.

To reproduce:
* Double-click any .doc file

Alternatively:
In a terminal, 'touch foo.doc && touch foo.docx'
Double-click each foo* file; foo.doc opens in gedit and foo.docs opens in LibreOffice.

I believe this is a regression from 11.04; I first noticed it after upgrading from 11.04 to 11.10 beta 1.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: desktop-file-utils 0.18-0ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-11.18-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-11-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Sep 19 14:41:08 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Beta amd64 (20100901.1)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: desktop-file-utils
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-09-02 (17 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Seems a gio bug, see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=658188

IRC discussion:

" <mclasen> yeah
  as I said, at this point, I expect test cases to back up any purported 'fixes'
  the entire mime handling is too wobbly
 <mclasen> if that happens, it is a bug that should be demonstrated by a testcase
 <mclasen> there are existing testcases for mime handling in gio that can be extended to show the problem"

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package glib2.0 - 2.30.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
glib2.0 (2.30.0-0ubuntu1) oneiric; urgency=low

  * New upstream release for GNOME 3.2 final:
    - This release contains an ABI change: code written by the GDBus code
      generation in this version of GLib is not compatible with earlier
      versions of the library (and vice versa)
    - desktop file handling: avoid mimeapps.list corruption issue
    - info capplet: Failed to calculate disk space. (LP: #805504)
    - _set_as_last_used_for_type generates a broken mimeapps.list
      (LP: #854124)
    - Various bug fixes.
    - Translation updates.
  * 01_gettext-desktopfiles.patch, 04_homedir_env.patch: Refresh to apply
    cleanly.
  * debian/libglib2.0-0.symbols: Update to new upstream version,
    g_slice_debug_tree_statistics() was dropped. (Not part of official API,
    not documented.)
  * debian/control.in: Add Breaks: to the nautilus and gnome-online-accounts
    versions which were built with the previous unstable gdbus-codegen
    version, these need a rebuild. While this doesn't actually break nautilus,
    it's safer to do so.
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:10:09 +0200