please provide an evince mailcap file

[Seth Arnold]

Hello; when I try to view PDFs from mutt, gimp is selected. Gimp is a very poor choice for viewing PDFs. I have evince installed, but evince is listed after gimp in my /etc/mailcap file. I tried to fix this by using the /etc/mailcap.order file but this failed:

$ grep application/pdf /etc/mailcap
application/pdf; gimp-2.10 %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
application/pdf; evince %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
$ cat /etc/mailcap.order
###############################################################################
#
# Mailcap.order: This file allows a system-wide override of MIME program
# preferences. See the mailcap.order(5) man page for more information.
#
# After modifying this file, be sure to run /usr/sbin/update-mime (as root)
# to propagate the changes into the /etc/mailcap file.
#
################################################################################

qiv:image/*
evince:application/pdf
$ sudo update-mime
Warning: package evince listed in /etc/mailcap.order does not have mailcap entries.
$ dpkg -L evince | grep -i mailcap
$ dpkg -L evince-common | grep -i mailcap
$

Thanks

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: evince 3.36.7-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-42.46-generic 5.4.44
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.6
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
Date: Thu Aug 27 22:02:01 2020
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=rxvt-unicode-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evince
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-01-24 (216 days ago)

[Seth Arnold (seth-arnold)]

Oh yes, this was reported by other people (though not in any useful way) at https://askubuntu.com/questions/1118437/promote-evince-in-etc-mailcap-order

Thanks

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Kenrick Bingham (loxo)]

Contrary to the original bug report, it looks like in fact /etc/mailcap.order also affects entries originating from /usr/share/applications, as long as the first field matches the name of the .desktop file (minus the .desktop extension).

So, if you add the line

  org.gnome.Evince:application/pdf

into mailcap.order and run update-mime, you will have evince as the default handler for application/pdf files.

In any case, even if we may have personal prefernces, evince is probably a more sensible default choice for viewing pdf's than gimp, so something should be done to fix this.

[Kenrick Bingham (loxo)]

See also: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=935426