[xubuntu-users] Link between Chrome and Thunderbird

[Peter Flynn]

On 02/28/2015 10:11 PM, Peter Flynn wrote:
> On 02/27/2015 03:42 PM, Gérald Jean wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> running Xubuntu 14.04 LTS, 64-bit on AMD.
>>
>> This morning the system did a routine upgrade, after which it asks to
>> reboot, I clicked yes, it did and from then on, when I click on a link
>> in a Thunderbird email, it does open new instances of Firefox every time
>> and it does open it on the Welcome page, NOT the page the link is
>> supposed to lead to??
> 
> I have the same problem in reverse, with Chrome under Xubuntu
> 
> Any time I click on a mailto link in a web page, it opens a new Chrome
> window instead of opening Thunderbird.
> 
> In System Settings » Default Applications, Mail *is* set to Thunderbird,
> and I can't find anywhere inside Chrome to specify what used to be
> called "helper applications" in other browsers.
> 
> There appears to be some system program (whose name I have forgotten, so
> I can't Google it) which is supposed to provide applications with the
> correct application to run for various circumstances, but it's clearly
> not configured correctly.

Hah. Found it.¹ The bogus program is called xdg-open, and it's
apparently meant to
[from the man page]:

"open a file or URL in the user's preferred application. If a URL is
provided the URL will be opened in the user's preferred web browser. If
a file is provided the file will be opened in the preferred application
for files of that type. xdg-open supports file, ftp, http and https URLs."

Possibly the most broken aspect is that if it's fed a URL of any type,
it opens it in the browser...which accounts for Chrome not being able to
open a mailto: link with Thunderbird.

Can I just get rid of it? Can Chrome itself be configured to open
mailto: links by passing them to Thunderbird?

///Peter
-- 
¹ The only reason I found it is that when I open CUPS in Chrome
(localhost:631) and click on a printer, I get an error pane saying that
xdg-open was unable to open an ipps: URL, which is nonsense (all the
other IPPS printers open fine).