[xubuntu-users] SOLVED: Link between Chrome and Thunderbird

[Peter Flynn]

On 03/11/2015 10:53 PM, Andy Proctor wrote:
> On 11/03/15 21:21, Peter Flynn wrote:
>> On 03/11/2015 09:06 PM, Andy Proctor wrote:
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>
>>> I performed a huge update tonight, too many items to list here, but
>>> either the Thunderbird or Mozilla updates included a fix for the
>>> problem. Well done to whoever fixed it!
>> Unfortunately it didn't fix the problem of Chrome trying to open mailto
>> links using itself, instead of passing them to the installed mail user
>> agent.
>>
>> ///Peter
>>
> Sorry to hear that Peter, Chrome wasn't part of my update package as I
> don't use it. Hopefully there will be a Chrome update for you soon

Curiously, it looks like the real culprit may not be Chrome, although
Chrome's handler settings are deficient in that they don't provide for
mailto:

The culprit seems to be xdg-email, which is a utility to open the
"right" application for a mailto: link. There is a patch available from
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-utils/+bug/1019259 for
this script, which prevents xdg-email failing when it finds *three* Exec
lines in the thunderbird.desktop file, and replaces a bogus $browser
with $desktop. Unfortunately even that didn't fix it for me.

On the way through, however, I typed

$ xdg-settings get default-web-browser
xdg-settings: unknown desktop environment

I'm using Enlightenment, and it's possible that this is interfering with
xdg-email and causing it to return nothing at all.

Personally, I think using xdg is a mistake. Handling URIs is best
configured *in* the browser, not by relying on yet another utility,
which is clearly incapable of returning sane values.

///Peter