Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Add gnome-text-editor as *optional* helper for application/octet-stream

  • 1 reply
  • 0 have this problem
  • 70 views
  • Last reply by Carl

Most attachments come through as application/octet-stream which I should be perfectly able to view via "gnome-text-editor" or "gedit" etc. I want to be given the option to use one of these.

I don't see any mechanism in the menus to allow this, though. The "application/octet-stream" is conspicuously absent from the content-type list, which is absurd since that's what 99% of all attachments are recognized as.

Note that I want this as an *OPTION* to going through the steps of downloading and then viewing the file.

Most attachments come through as application/octet-stream which I should be perfectly able to view via "gnome-text-editor" or "gedit" etc. I want to be given the option to use one of these. I don't see any mechanism in the menus to allow this, though. The "application/octet-stream" is conspicuously absent from the content-type list, which is absurd since that's what 99% of all attachments are recognized as. Note that I want this as an *OPTION* to going through the steps of downloading and then viewing the file.

All Replies (1)

I tried editing this file

~/snap/thunderbird/common/.thunderbird/4szjti50.default/handlers.json

and added an entry for "application/octet-stream", then used the menu to add the editor-options. This is what it looks like now:

"application/octet-stream":{"action":2,"handlers":[{"name":"gnome-text-editor","path":"/run/user/1019214002/doc/3d5685d4/gnome-text-editor"},{"name":"gedit","path":"/run/user/1019214002/doc/1ab6d2b0/gedit"}],"ask":true}

So far so good -- I can select either editor. The funny thing, though, is that I can tell it to open the file, but no editor-window pops up. What else do I need to do? Note that I originally pointed these editors to be under /usr/bin. The above paths under /run are valid, though, the binaries are identical to the originals.

Modified by Carl

Helpful?

Ask a question

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.