Hello everybody, I also had the problem of Evolution offering only the "Save as..." option since 2.0.something, and until now (I'm using 2.2.1.1). I understood they switched to the shared-mime database, and I have the newest version, 0.16-3. So I started reading the specifications. This is what I learned:
* shared-mime is a framework for the MIME types, but all that is delivered with the shared-mime-info package is information about the MIME packages such as (I'm just creating examples): - a file starting with <html> is of type "text/html" - a file whose name ends with .html is of type "text/html" - the type "text/html" is called in English "HTML page", in German "HTML-Seite" etc. * The framework DOES NOT specify which application can be used to open/edit a type like "text/html". That is why Evolution knows that a .pdf attachment is a "PDF document" (he looked for the "application/pdf" type inside the mail in the shared-mime database) - but he doesn't know who is responsible for opening it. That's the application's task - it has to add information to the MIME database, by giving .xml or .desktop files. If you're interested, read http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fmime_2dactions_2dspec * For example, I thought I had quite a recent xpdf version. But only the newest update, from 3.00-12 to 3.00-13, brought the file /usr/share/applications/xpdf.desktop and now, finally, Evolution is offering to open my PDF attachment with xpdf. * The other way of assigning programs to MIME types are pre-written databases or daemons who try to find known programs on the system and assign them to MIME types. I think the Midnight Commander does it this way (using "mailcap" files included in the mime-support package). Maybe there is a GNOME daemon who does this, and that's why you have no problems with most types after installing some GNOME packages. Or it's just that all the new-installed GNOME applications behave correctly. Conclusion: Let's hope that all new applications declare themselves correctly to the database - if we want to stick to older versions, we'll have to write .desktop or .xml files ourselves. Have a nice day everybody, Viktor.
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