dired-launch

<2024-02-11> Archived & moved to codeberg.org. https://codeberg.org/thomp/dired-launch

Launch an external application from dired

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dired-launch is a launcher for the Emacs dired-mode. In a nutshell, it lets you select a file and then launch an external application with that file.

Getting started

If MELPA is enabled as an Emacs package repository, it should be possible to install simply using M-x list-packages and selecting the dired-launch package for installation (i x).

Getting started without the Emacs package manager

1. Download dired-launch.el.

2. Load dired-launch.el. For example, you might add the following line to ~/.emacs:

   (load "/path/to/dired-launch.el")

3. Ensure dired-launch is enabled in dired-mode:

   (dired-launch-enable)

Ensure dired-launch is configured as desired

Ensure the default launcher specified by dired-launch-default-launcher is the desired program. For example, one might specify xdg-open as the default launcher:

;; use xdg-open as the default launcher
(setq dired-launch-default-launcher '("xdg-open"))

Use

1. M-x dired

2. Move the cursor to a file of interest

3. Launch

   J (dired-launch-command) launches the file using the preferred application

   K (dired-launch-with-prompt-command) prompts for the application and then launches the file

Modifying the default keybindings

If you prefer different key bindings, consider modifying the default keybinding(s).

;; bind the 'l' key to dired-launch-command
(define-key dired-launch-mode-map (kbd "l") 'dired-launch-command)

Specifying preferred applications

Using dired-launch-extensions-map

One can use dired-launch-extensions-map to specify, for a given file extension, one or more preferred applications by simply specifying the application as a string.

(setf dired-launch-extensions-map
      '(;; specify LibreOffice as the preferred application for
        ;; a Microsoft Excel file with the xslx extension
        ("xlsx" ("libreofficedev5.3"))
        ;; specify LibreOffice and Abiword as preferred applications for
        ;; an OpenDocument text file with the odt extension
        ("odt" ("libreofficedev5.3" "abiword"))))

One can also use dired-launch-extensions-map to specify, for a given file extension, an arbitrary function to invoke.

This entry specifies, for files with the 'html' extension, calling the 'bluefish' executable with the '-n' option.

(list "html"
      (list (list "special html launcher"
		  #'(lambda (file)
		      (message "encountered an HTML file: %s" file)
		      ;; invoke arbitrary command
		      (dired-launch-call-process-on "bluefish" "-n" file)))))

Here, the second member of dired-launch-extensions-map specifies, for files with the 'txt' extension, Emacs should directly open the application using find-file.

(setf dired-launch-extensions-map 
      (list
       ;; LibreOffice and Abiword as preferred applications for
       ;; an OpenDocument text (odt) file
       '("odt" ("libreofficedev5.3" "abiword"))
       ;; open text files with Emacs
       '("txt" (("emacs" find-file)))))

Linux

Change the preferred (default) application for a given file type by invoking mimeopen with the '-d' flag:

   mimeopen -d myfile

Related projects

Launch

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

If you did not receive a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.