Subject: Re: bug#43318: Unable to open remote pdf directly with eww

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2020 22:51:04 +0200

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

> In that case, it should try using a different pdf viewer, but I'm not
> quite sure how that's handled.  mailcap should probably be consulted?

Oh, that is what it's doing:

(defun mailcap-view-mime (type)
  "View the data in the current buffer that has MIME type TYPE.
`mailcap--computed-mime-data' determines the method to use."
  (let ((method (mailcap-mime-info type)))
    (if (stringp method)
	(shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max)
				 ;; Use stdin as the "%s".
				 (format method "-")
				 (current-buffer)
				 t)
      (funcall method))))

eww puts the pdf data in a buffer and calls (for instance) "xpdf -" on
the data.

But this'll fail for most pdf viewers -- most of them don't read from
stdin, so this seems like a pretty gross hack...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no