pcmanfm-qt requires refresh to determine MIME type of new files

[brudan]

Is anybody out there running OpenBSD 6.4 with LXQt 0.13?

x11/lxqt/pcmanfm-qt does not immediately parse new files to determine their MIME type. I've not been able to fix this, despite investing several hours and also asking for help in the LXQt support forum (the folks there are very friendly and helpful but do not have a lot of experience with our favorite OS).

Easiest way to reproduce the problem is to download or create any file to one's desktop. For example:

1.

$ import -window root ~/Desktop/test.jpg

2. Right-click on the file’s icon on the Desktop, choose Properties. It says “MIME type: text/plain” (wrong).

3. Open up a file manager window, navigate to ~/Desktop, press F5 to refresh.

4. Back at the desktop: Right-click on the file’s icon, choose Properties. Now it is says “MIME type: image/jpeg” (correct).

Does anyone know how to make pcmanfm-qt immediately parse new files to determine their MIME type, on OpenBSD? I suspect I'm either missing a helper package, configuration setting, or environmental variable, but I just don't know enough about Qt or LXQt (or GUIs in general) to figure this out on my own.

[shep]

It maybe an upstream bug.

At the bottom of this page
https://github.com/lxqt/lxqt/issues/35
there were issue with mimetypes Oct. 7, 2018. Some posters had improvment by adding /devel/xdg-utils.

The version of pcmanfm-qt (13.0) in ports was from September 2018
/x11/lxqt/pcmanfm-qt
It looks to have been fixed in pcmanfm-qt 14.0.

[brudan]

Thank you, shep. Interesting thread.

devel/xdg-utils and x11/gnome/gvfs were both already automatically installed on my system (presumably as dependencies). The other package mentioned in the thread, devel/p5-File-MimeInfo (known as libfile-mimeinfo-perl in some Linuxes), was not installed on my system, so I installed it. Alas, the problem persists.

Yes, there is a chance this may be an upstream bug since it sounds like pcmanfm-qt 0.13 had issues with MIME types. Hopefully once I upgrade to OBSD 6.5 and LXQt 0.14 the problem will go away. I'll report back.

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by brudan

Hopefully once I upgrade to OBSD 6.5 and LXQt 0.14 the problem will go away.

The port (and resulting package) for 6.5 will still be release 0.13.

It appears to me like the entire branch of ports for LXQT will need to be upgraded together.

[brudan]

So much for hoping for an easy fix

[jggimi]

You could always contact the port maintainer, who is named in the output of $ pkg_info pcmanfm-qt regarding any update plans. If Elias responds with "no plans at this time due to <reason>" you'll know why, and if the reason is "not enough available time right now" you could always make the attempt to update the port.

[shep]

It appears to me like the entire branch of ports for LXQt will need to be upgraded together.

I have not looked LXQt closely but it's predecessor, LXDE was fairly modular and x11/pcmanfm is available in a ports tree that lacks LXDE.

This would suggest several other options.

1) In LXDE, default applications can be set by running lxsession-default-apps in a terminal. x11/lxqt/session likely has the same functionality. You can also manually edit ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_set_default_app.html

2) The pcmanfm-qt port looks fairly simple (just 2 patches) and you may be able to upgrade the port to 14.1 individually.

3) Unless you are invested in Qt5, I put together an LXDE clone in the howto section of the forum. It should still work as is although the menu hack, using xdotools, can be replaced with jgmenu in 6.5. (note: The x11/jgmenu entry is missing in openports.se).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDmNO_83EnM

4) I've found that the gtk3 version of pcmanfm will remember what the file was opened with. I usually don't like a default of looking at a *.jpg in gimp. If this is the case with pcmanfm-qt, you could easily set your default mimetype.

5) You can mix toolkits and install the gtk version of pcmanfm. By default, the LXQt desktop uses gtk based x11/openbox. I tried LXQt in Arch Linux, and was able to use kwin in place of openbox. The Qt5 version of kwin does not pull as many dependencies as the Qt4 version. There is an ongoing effort to upgrade KDE4 to Plasma - the build infrastructure is in ports now.