thunderbird pdf association

[Tim]

On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 19:03 -0700, Skunk Worx wrote:
> I have Fedora 11 X86_64 and when I get a PDF in email via Thunderbird
> I double click the PDF attachment and it pops up with :
>
> "somefile.pdf could not be opened, because the associated helper 
> application does not exist. Change the association in your
> preferences."

Have a look at the source for a problem message, and look for a
content-type header above the PDF attachment.  If it's a PDF content
type, you've got a problem with associating the right program with the
file.  If it's octet-stream, the mail author stuffed it up, and you're
left with manually saving the file and opening it with something else.

Octet-stream is a generic content type for ANY type of binary file.  It
simply means this file is some sort of binary.  You can't associate a
program with that type, because it could be used for anything.  You
could try associating it with a PDF viewer, then you'd get stuck, again,
when someone sent you a JPEG, or document, as octet-stream, later on.

If you use Gnome, you could try associating it with gnome-open, and hope
that it can handle the file type, itself, as a middle man.

This is a common problem, and it'd be helpful if mail programs let you
set up a list of open-with program handlers for unidentified binary
files (e.g. open with evince, open with eog, open with openoffice.org)
that would pop-up when you clicked on such attachments, letting you
choose the most likely one.


-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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