Unruh wrote:

> Weird problem. Mandriva 2007 Nautilus nautilus-2.16.0-2mdv2007.0
> Suddenly it is identifying pdf files as text files.
> If you double left click on the pdf file, an error message comes up saying
> the extention is pdf, but the file content indicates text file.
> and it does not open the file. If you right click a menu of possibilities
> comes up listing acroread, xpdf, as possibilities, and when you select
> acroread say, it opens fine. Something is going very wrong in the
> identification of the files. What could I fix?

Well, UNIX identifies a filetype based upon the first bytes of the file
itself - which means that it will actually read part of the file, rather
than just read its name in the directory - but graphical applications and
desktop environments use the MIME-type filename extensions to categorize
the file.

I'm not familiar with Nautilus - I've seen it and fired it up once, but I
don't use it myself - and from what I gather, it's a Gnome application.
Therefore, you would most likely - or so I believe - need to fire up the
Gnome Control Panel and find the filetype associations section and look
there on what's become corrupted.

I'm not sure but if you're using KDE, then it's also possible that a similar
maintenance session of your filetype associations in the KDE Control Panel
would affect the behavior of Gnome-specific applications. Given the amount
of work Mandriva puts into harmonizing the KDE and Gnome environments, it's
possible that changing things in either KDE or Gnome affects the other
environment as well.

Hope this helps... ;-)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn writes:

>Unruh wrote:

>> Weird problem. Mandriva 2007 Nautilus nautilus-2.16.0-2mdv2007.0
>> Suddenly it is identifying pdf files as text files.
>> If you double left click on the pdf file, an error message comes up saying
>> the extention is pdf, but the file content indicates text file.
>> and it does not open the file. If you right click a menu of possibilities
>> comes up listing acroread, xpdf, as possibilities, and when you select
>> acroread say, it opens fine. Something is going very wrong in the
>> identification of the files. What could I fix?

>Well, UNIX identifies a filetype based upon the first bytes of the file
>itself - which means that it will actually read part of the file, rather
>than just read its name in the directory - but graphical applications and
>desktop environments use the MIME-type filename extensions to categorize
>the file.

Yes, and
file nameoffile.pdf
gives PDF as the file type.
Somehow Nautilus seems to have its own broken file recognition software.

I also got a complaint from the same user about Evolution-- it uses its own
broken timezone code, and it destroys pdf files that it sends out so they
are unreadable by others. I have not looked into this carefully.



>I'm not familiar with Nautilus - I've seen it and fired it up once, but I
>don't use it myself - and from what I gather, it's a Gnome application.
>Therefore, you would most likely - or so I believe - need to fire up the
>Gnome Control Panel and find the filetype associations section and look
>there on what's become corrupted.

>I'm not sure but if you're using KDE, then it's also possible that a similar
>maintenance session of your filetype associations in the KDE Control Panel
>would affect the behavior of Gnome-specific applications. Given the amount
>of work Mandriva puts into harmonizing the KDE and Gnome environments, it's
>possible that changing things in either KDE or Gnome affects the other
>environment as well.

>Hope this helps... ;-)

Thanks.


>--
>Aragorn
>(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Op dinsdag 15-04-2008 om 18:37 uur [tijdzone +0000], schreef Unruh:

> Yes, and
> file nameoffile.pdf
> gives PDF as the file type.
> Somehow Nautilus seems to have its own broken file recognition software.

The fact that in your particular case there seems to be a problem,
doesn't mean the software is broken.

> I also got a complaint from the same user about Evolution-- it uses its own
> broken timezone code, and it destroys pdf files that it sends out so they
> are unreadable by others. I have not looked into this carefully.

That's just very unlikely. I use Evolution and have never had any of
these problems.

> >Therefore, you would most likely - or so I believe - need to fire up the
> >Gnome Control Panel and find the filetype associations section and look
> >there on what's become corrupted.

Gnome doesn't have its own file type associatons control panel. You can
simply open the Properties window of any PDF file, click on the Open
With tab, and select your preferred PDF reader there. (If you insist on
an associaton editor, try something like
http://www.kdau.com/projects/assogiate/)

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen
http://vanschouwen.info/