xdg-open of html files on RHEL 9 invokes ChimeraX instead of web browser

[Guillaume Gaullier <guillaume.gaullier@…>]

Hello,

I encountered an annoying behavior of ChimeraX on Rocky Linux 9.3, installed with the RPM package: ChimeraX seems to have declared itself the default application to open local html files.

When I need to open an html file in ChimeraX's browser, I do it from within ChimeraX. But when I double-click on an html file, I want it to open in my default web browser (which is already running most of the time, and if not it still starts faster than ChimeraX).

I could revert this behavior. I also checked that this doesn't happen on a Mac.

If it is intended, in my experience it's been mostly getting in the way when doing tasks unrelated to ChimeraX, so maybe it is worth reconsidering.

Cheers,

Guillaume

[Greg Couch]

This is looking like a bug in RHEL 9's xdg-utils package. ChimeraX uses xdg-utils to integrate with the desktop environment. In particular, ChimeraX uses the xdg-mime program to register which MIME types ChimeraX can open.

"xdg-mime query default text/html" should return the program used to open html files. And, as expected, in my RHEL 9 VM, it returns "firefox.desktop". And yet, when I "xdg-open test.html", it starts ChimeraX instead.

[Greg Couch]

Haven't figured out why ChimeraX registering that it can handle html files alters the default behavior. But it can be "fixed" by following the instructions at ​https://help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/mime-types-application-user.html.en and creating a ~/.config/mimeapps.list file with:

[Default Applications]
text/html=firefox.desktop
application/xhtml+xml=firefox.desktop

[guillaume.gaullier@…]

Thank you Greg. I will try to use the report bug tool in the future. This time it didn’t come to mind because there was no error or crash of ChimeraX (it simply popped up when I expected a different program).

If it is a bug in Rocky, I think we are stuck with it for some time then. I have run into other bugs (unrelated to ChimeraX) that I found reports for, and that are presumably fixed in more recent versions of the upstream software but haven’t made it into Rocky yet. The downside of using a stable distribution… At least this can be fixed manually with some configuration, there are worse bugs.

Cheers,

Guillaume


On 6 Apr 2024, at 21:50, ChimeraX <ChimeraX-bugs-admin@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:ChimeraX-bugs-admin@cgl.ucsf.edu>> wrote:

#14909: xdg-open of html files on RHEL 9 invokes ChimeraX instead of web browser
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
         Reporter:  Guillaume Gaullier          |      Owner:  Greg Couch
 <guillaume.gaullier@…>                         |
             Type:  defect                      |     Status:  assigned
         Priority:  major                       |  Milestone:  1.8
        Component:  Platform                    |    Version:
       Resolution:                              |   Keywords:
       Blocked By:                              |   Blocking:
Notify when closed:                              |   Platform:  Linux64
          Project:  ChimeraX                    |  (X11)
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
Comment (by Greg Couch):

Haven't figured out why ChimeraX registering that it can handle html files
alters the default behavior.  But it can be "fixed" by following the
instructions at https://help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable
/mime-types-application-user.html.en and creating a
~/.config/mimeapps.list file with:
{{{
[Default Applications]
text/html=firefox.desktop
application/xhtml+xml=firefox.desktop
}}}
--
Ticket URL: <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/trac/ChimeraX/ticket/14909#comment:2>
ChimeraX <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/>
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[Greg Couch]

While this ticket should probably be closed as limitation. I'm leaving this ticket open to prod me to dig deeper and possibly file a bug with CentOS Stream.

[Greg Couch]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Greg Couch]

This is fixed in Fedora 41 and 42. Need to test Fedora 40 and the RHEL 10 release candidate.

The solution will be to document this as a known issue.