Re: dired: launch program withou stalling emacs

[suvayu ali]

2009/7/20 suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com>:
> 2009/7/20 Alain Muls <alain.muls@telenet.be>:
>>
>> I am learning to use dired for file operations. I found out how to launch a
>> program associated with the extension using eg
>>
>> (require 'dired-x)
>> (setq dired-guess-shell-alist-user
>>      '(("\\.pdf$" "evince")))
>>
>> The inconvenience of this is that I have to close the program before I can
>> resume working in emacs. Is there a possibility to launch the pdfviewer
>> evince and be able to work in emacs without closing the pdfviewer?
>>
>
> If you are on GNU/Linux you can try `! xdg-open RET'.
>

> Alain wrote:
>
> this works fine for PDF files, but it fails on .fig (xfig) or .odt 
> (openoffice) files.

Hi Alain,

It should work for _all_ files. What xdg-open does is open the file in
the preferred application as per the settings of the user. If it fails
for you, then your default applications settings is not what it should
be.

I am not sure how to correct this from the command line (you can try
xdg-mime), but from the GUI you can right click a file and set the
defaults by going to the properties menu on almost any modern window
manager.

I believe this is getting off-topic on the emacs list beyond this
point. If your problem persists, try posting on your distro's user
list. Hope this helps.

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.