On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 08:42 -0400, Claude Jones wrote:
When I click on a pdf link in Firefox, I get a message saying the
helper application doesn't exist and to change that in preferences.
The usual problem is that the source isn't telling you that it's a PDF
file, but uses the generic binary "application/octet-stream"
description. No doubt there's helper plugins for Firefox that can help
you diagnose that, but you can just use Lynx (the text browser). Copy
the address for a PDF file, type in lynx --head, then paste in the
address. You can see the content-type description in the headers you
get back from the webserver.
e.g. lynx --head
http://example.com/fake-test.pdf
When you strike the same issue with PDFs in your email, simply look at
the source code for the message, and look for a similar content-type
header.
If it's not a proper description, you'll strike problems. If you try to
force the wrong filetype description to be the PDF type, you'll strike
problems when something else uses that filetype description.
A way around this is to use a handler in the middle, that will determine
file types for itself. Such as specifying that gnome-open will handle
all application/octet-stream files.
--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I
read messages from the public lists.