Some Thunderbird attachments don't start application

[Tim]

On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 11:50 +0100, Antonio M wrote:
> I got an attachment (Microsoft Office doc) but I didn't get the option
> of F11 to open it with Openoffice or any other application, there is
> no open with option, same attachment open  fine in F12, starting
> Openoffice writer!!!

Chances are that whoever sent you that file sent it with the wrong MIME
type descriptor.  The sending client describes the type of file, and the
receiving client passes that file off to the default application for
that type of file.  If the *type* is not correctly outlined, then the
whole system fails to work.

Most likely, it was described as application/octet-stream which means
"this is some unknown kind of binary file, figure out how to handle this
by yourself."  If you try to set up your system to believe that all such
unidentified files are word documents, by default, then you're setting
yourself up for failure with the next NON word document that's sent with
the *unknown* *binary* file type description.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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