#!/bin/sh # DESCRIPTION # Mutt invokes external attachment viewers by writing the # attachment to a temporary file, executing the pipeline specified # for that attachment type in the mailcap file, waiting for the # pipeline to terminate, writing nulls over the temporary file, # then deleting it. This causes problems when using graphical # viewers such as qvpview and acroread to view attachments. # # If qvpview, for example, is executed in the foreground, the mutt # user interface is hung until qvpview exits, so the user can't do # anything else with mutt until he or she finishes reading the # attachment and exits qvpview. This is especially annoying when # a message contains several MS Office attachments--one would like # to have them all open at once. # # If qvpview is executed in the background, it must be given # enough time to completely read the file before returning control # to mutt, since mutt will then obliterate the file. Qvpview is # so slow that this time can exceed 20 seconds, and the bound is # unknown. So this is again annoying. # # The solution provided here is to invoke the specified viewer # from this script after first copying mutt's temporary file to # another temporary file. This script can then quickly return # control to mutt while the viewer can take as much time as it # needs to read and render the attachment. # # EXAMPLE # To use qvpview to view MS Office attachments from mutt, add the # following lines to mutt's mailcap file. # # application/msword; mutt_bgrun qvpview %s # application/vnd.ms-excel; mutt_bgrun qvpview %s # application/vnd.ms-powerpoint; mutt_bgrun qvpview %s prog=${0##*/} # Check the arguments first. if [ "$#" -lt "2" ]; then echo "usage: $prog viewer [viewer options] file" >&2 exit 1 fi # Separate the arguments. Assume the first is the viewer, the last is # the file, and all in between are options to the viewer. viewer="$1" shift while [ "$#" -gt "1" ]; do options="$options $1" shift done file=$1 # Create a temporary directory for our copy of the temporary file. # # This is more secure than creating a temporary file in an existing # directory. tmpdir=/tmp/$LOGNAME$$ umask 077 mkdir "$tmpdir" || exit 1 tmpfile="$tmpdir/${file##*/}" # Copy mutt's temporary file to our temporary directory so that we can # let mutt overwrite and delete it when we exit. cp "$file" "$tmpfile" # Run the viewer in the background and delete the temporary files when done. ( "$viewer" $options "$tmpfile" rm -f "$tmpfile" rmdir "$tmpdir" ) &