Libre Office, open file with other application

bkelly · 04-23-2018, 10:10 AM

With Libre Office open and showing a list of files in a directory, right click on a dot cpp file and select

Quote:

Open with Other Application

Libre presents a list of Recommended Applications with one entry that is not what I want. At the bottom click

Quote:

View All Applications

A longer list is presented. Vi and vim are not present. I detect no method of adding either one.
What are the steps needed to add vi to the list of Recommended Applications?

bgstack15 · 04-23-2018, 02:28 PM

Generally, you can use a mime editor to update what application is used to open files. In a graphical desktop environment, you probably will need to make a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/.

Copy one of the existing .desktop files in there, and update it to execute /usr/bin/vi, along with the other properties that are fairly obvious.

Once you have that vim.desktop, your DE should be able to show you vim in the list of "other applications."

bkelly · 04-23-2018, 03:30 PM

I am a Linux novice but I did try this:

Quote:

cd /usr/share/applications/

where there is a flock of mate* files. So right click on a file within Mate Files application / GUI to find this text in the user prompt:

Quote:

"Open With Other Applications"

Cool, so find the configuration file with that text using:

Quote:

grep -r "Open With Other" ./

That came up empty. Am I on the right track? I am looking for the right file to edit and include vi / vim as an option.

bgstack15 · 04-23-2018, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bkelly

I am a Linux novice but I did try this:

where there is a flock of mate* files. So right click on a file within Mate Files application / GUI to find this text in the user prompt:

Cool, so find the configuration file with that text using:
That came up empty. Am I on the right track? I am looking for the right file to edit and include vi / vim as an option.

Nope. You're going in the wrong direction.

Generally, a desktop environment looks at the contents of the .desktop files. Each file represents a single application.
Here's an example file for you: /usr/share/applications/vim.desktop

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=vim
GenericName=Text Editor
Comment=Edit files
Exec=/usr/bin/vim %F
MimeType=text/plain;
Icon=vim
Terminal=true
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Categories=TextEditor;Development
Keywords=text;editor;
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.23

You can get more details about what these items in a desktop file mean: https://specifications.freedesktop.o...ec-latest.html

bkelly · 04-27-2018, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bgstack15

Nope. You're going in the wrong direction.

Generally, a desktop environment looks at the contents of the .desktop files. Each file represents a single application.

Making this short, you wrote I am going in the wrong direction but I read your post as indicating I am going in the right direction.

Mate has a bunch of .desktop files. I did find this one:

Quote:

mate-panel.desktop

That has this comment:

Quote:

Launch other applications ....

However, there is no list of other applications to launch.

If you have MATE on your system and know how to edit the dot desktop files, please tell me where and how to edit in order to add vi to the list of other application for opening a file.