Mutt and mailcap: two apps to open attachments
Yesterday, I was looking for the syntax of the “pipe-entry” command in mutt, which allows to pass a message or an attachment to a specific command. For instance, for a pdf, one can press “|” then type “acroread -“ to open a pdf with the adobe pdf reader. I did not find the exact syntax but I found that in the mailcap file, it is possible to configure not only one but two applications to automatically open a file.
The regular syntax is:
text/html; /usr/bin/firefox %s;
for an html file. This way, when you visualize the attachments (by pressing “v”), if you are on an html file, if you press ENTER it opens in firefox. It is possible add something like this:
text/html; /usr/bin/firefox %s; print=/usr/bin/chromium %s
so that, while keeping the ENTER behavior, you also get a print behavior (press “p”): the file may then be open in chromium, with “P”. Indeed, it also works with pdf files:
application/pdf; /usr/bin/zathura %s; print=/usr/bin/acroread %s
zathura is a nice pdf viewer but it sometimes lack some of the features of Acroread (which is way heavier).