54744 - Can't add or change helper apps

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Akkana Peck]

I went through the Preferences->Helper Applications procedure to add some new
mime types, including application/gzip, and told it to always save to disk.  But
even after a restart, when I doubleclick on one of the .tar.gz files used for
the mozilla build, I get a dialog saying that application/gzip is unrecognized
by mozilla.  The type did get added to my mimetypes.rdf, and it shows up in the
Helper Apps pref pane, but the addition is being ignored.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

not mine. over to mscott for evaluation

Comment 2

[Akkana Peck]

Changing summary.  This is not just saving files: you can't add a new mime type
with a helper app either (nothing I type in the dialog is saved), nor edit an
existing mime type (the dialog comes up blank, and nothing I type in it is
saved), nor specify a new helper app in the dialog that comes up when you go to
a page with a new mime type (the "always use for this type" button is always
greyed out).

Basically, the helper app mechanism doesn't work at all, and I'm not sure why we
even bother to offer the prefs pane.

Increasing severity because it's starting to become a hassle that I can't view
any PDF pages in 6.0.  (I can probably figure out what file to edit and how, but
Joe User won't be able to.)

Comment 3

[Akkana Peck]

One other thing: if you to to a page with PDF and get the "what application do
you want to use?" dialog (which I shouldn't get in the first place, since prefs
already tells me I have a helper app for application/pdf though it won't show me
what the helper app is), I can't set focus or type in the text field in that
dialog, so I can't even specify a one-time helper app there.

Comment 4

[Akkana Peck]

Looks like mozilla has made a mess of my mimeTypes.rdf.  There are quite a few
entries for pdf.  I'll attach the current version of the file, then remove it
and see if it regenerates something usable.

Comment 5

[Akkana Peck]

Attachment: apparently horked mimeTypes.rdf

Comment 6

[Akkana Peck]

After I removed mimeTypes.rdf, I went to a page with pdf to get the dialog.
Still couldn't type in the text field, but when I clicked the Browse button to
get a file selection dialog, I was able to type in the fsb text field and select
an application.  "Always use this" was greyed out as usual, but was checked.  It
did correctly call up the acroread I chose, but did not remember that in my mime
types as shown in prefs/helper apps.

Comment 7

[Akkana Peck]

Even after removing mimeTypes.rdf, I can't add the helper app in the prefs pane.
 When I click OK after filling out all the fields, I get:
JavaScript error:
 line 0: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code:
0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIRDFContainer.Init]"  nsresult: "0x80004005
(NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://communicator/content/pref/overrideHandler.js :: anonymous :: line 242"
 data: no]
If I click again, I get "a helper already exists for the type ..." but still
nothing goes into the list shown in the prefs pane, and nothing gets written to
mimeTypes.rdf.

Comment 8

[Scott MacGregor]

akkana, we had a problem with profiles created before beta2 with corrupt mime
types.rdf. Deleting the file didn't fix it either. I'd suggest either creating a
new profile with the rtm version or creating a new profile and copying the clean
mimetypes.rdf into your original profile directory.

There was supposed to be a comment in the release notes about that (a minor
note) but I never followed through to make sure it was fixed. There's nothing we
can do to pre-emptively handle the corruption without user intervention. beta
software..... =(