Hi,

I have recently experienced a little discomfort, when my regular click
on some mailto: link in a browser started opening Emacs (which I have
not configured for this purpose and never wanted to use it for Mail).
Instead of my regular mutt-in-terminal.

So I looked around and found:

/usr/share/applications/emacs-mail.desktop:Exec=emacs -f message-mailto %u
/usr/share/applications/emacsclient-mail.desktop:# u=$(echo "$1" | sed 's/[\"]/\\&/g'); exec emacsclient --alternate-editor= --reuse-frame --eval "(message-mailto \"$u\")"
/usr/share/applications/emacsclient-mail.desktop:Exec=sh -c "u=\\$(echo \\"\\$1\\" | sed 's/[\\\\\\"]/\\\\\\\\&/g'); exec /usr/bin/emacsclient --alternate-editor= --reuse-frame --eval \\"(message-mailto \\\\\\"\\$u\\\\\\")\\"" sh %u
/usr/share/applications/emacsclient-mail.desktop:Exec=sh -c "u=\\$(echo \\"\\$1\\" | sed 's/[\\\\\\"]/\\\\\\\\&/g'); exec /usr/bin/emacsclient --alternate-editor= --create-frame --eval \\"(message-mailto \\\\\\"\\$u\\\\\\")\\"" sh %u
/usr/share/applications/emacsclient-mail.desktop:Exec=emacs -f message-mailto %u

In my opinion, this is quite crude. Why are you pushing this
"emacslient" as default application as part of a BASE package?
Please stop doing that. Or move it to some optional package like
"emacslient-integration" which installs those application configs.

And I, for one, will uninstall emacs completely now. I kept it as
backup, but this brings me over the edge, sorry.

Best regards,
Eduard.

Eduard Bloch <edi@gmx.de> writes:

I spoke to someone who was more knowledgeable about the current state of
affairs, and they said that applications can't control the priorities
with desktop files the way they could with mailcap.  So emacs can only
say that it provides mailto support (which it does via notmuch, gnus,
rmail, etc.), but it can't set itself at a "lower" priority.

However, you can specify your own priorities either via your browser's
mechanism (settings > general > applications in firefox), or possibly
(it sounds like) via overrides provided by a desktop like gnome (if you
use it).  i.e. while I haven't used gnome in a while, it sounds like
they have a "default applications" option under settings.

Hope this helps.