Opening pdf / containing folder not working

[kulo73]

Hi,

I got a problem opening my pdf. When I click on right side's menu I can open the pdf (see picture).
When double clicking on the books in the main windows or using context menu "open containing folder" or clicking on the right side on "Path: Click to open" I get error messages like below.

Any ideas?
Cheers

when clicking open containing folder:
"Die Adresse »file:///home/planb/Calibre-Bibliothek/Karnath,%20Hans%20O_/Neuropsychologie%20(71)« konnte nicht geöffnet werden.

Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/planb/Calibre-Bibliothek/Karnath,%20Hans%20O_/Neuropsychologie%20(71)«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden."

when doubleclicking:
"Die Adresse »file:///home/planb/Calibre-Bibliothek/Karnath,%20Hans%20O_/Neuropsychologie%20(71)/Neuropsychologie%20-%20Karnath,%20Hans%20O_.pdf« konnte nicht geöffnet werden.

Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/planb/Calibre-Bibliothek/Karnath,%20Hans%20O_/Neuropsychologie%20(71)/Neuropsychologie%20-%20Karnath,%20Hans%20O_.pdf«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden."

[kovidgoyal]

xdg-open on your system is broken, it is not handling encoded file:// URLs correctly. Fix it and your problems will go away.

[kulo73]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

xdg-open on your system is broken, it is not handling encoded file:// URLs correctly. Fix it and your problems will go away.

Thank you for your fast help!

Problem seems XFCE specific (occured on Linix Mint 17.2 xfce 64bit)
Found the bug indeed in /usr/bin/xdg-open - "$' is missing a " ("$"')

If anybody else has the problem change

elif xprop -root _DT_SAVE_MODE 2> /dev/null | grep ' = \"xfce4\"$' >/dev/null 2>&1; then DE=xfce;

to

elif xprop -root _DT_SAVE_MODE 2> /dev/null | grep ' = \"xfce4\"$"' >/dev/null 2>&1; then DE=xfce;

cheers

[eschwartz]

Nope, what you have done is disabled detection of xfce4.
As a result, xdg-open uses its own open_generic() fallback (which parses desktop files) instead of open_xfce() which calls in turn on exo-open (part of xfce, and the true cause of the problem).

It's not so much that xdg-open is broken, it's just designed to work with a bunch of broken desktop-specific openers -- half of which are broken, and xdg-open does nothing to fix the problem.
Some desktops work fine with xdg-open, if their branded opener plays nice with encoded file urls.



But hey, that's "fixing" it too -- there must be some reason why drop-in replacements for xdg-open are so popular.
Some people seem to think the founding principle of xdg-open is entirely flawed.

[kovidgoyal]

IIRC someone recently submitted a fix for exo-open so hopefully, XFCE using people will not suffer from this for too much longer.

EDIT: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1246383