Start a program based on file's mimetype

[NormR2]

What command/program can I execute in a script to call the application associated with a mimetype/file extension? Like when you are in a File browser and you "open" a file.
The syntax in a script file would be: <start-app> <a-file>
The coding would be: <start-app> $1

For example, if <a-file> were: Something.html
then <start-app> would start a browser and have it open Something.html

Another example, if <a-file> were: Picture.jpg
then <start-app> would start an image program and have it open Picture.jpg

Thanks,
Norm

[WW]

If you are using gnome, you can try gnome-open (http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/12/16/gnome-open-open-anything-from-the-command-line/).

[stroyan]

You can use the 'see' command to open a file based on mimetype and mailcap.

[Awalton]

xdg-open will work on any system with the FreeDesktop Portland Utilities installed (it's a portable version of gnome-open; will work for GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc).

http://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.0/xdg-open.html

[NormR2]

gnome-open and xdg-open both worked as expected. For example;
gnome-open testing.html opened my browser formating the html
gnome-open testing.jgp opened eog showing the image
xdg-open testing.html worked same as gnome-open above

Couldn't get see to do that.
see testing.html opened a viewer/editor (w3m?) of the html file

[WitchCraft]

If you are using gnome, you can try gnome-open (http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/12/16/gnome-open-open-anything-from-the-command-line/).

just use 'open', not 'gnome-open', it does work on gnome & kde & unix.

[stroyan]

Couldn't get see to do that.
see testing.html opened a viewer/editor (w3m?) of the html file

w3m is actually a text based web browser. I don't know why the mailcap
entry pointed to that. I would only expect that to be used if the
DISPLAY environment variable was not set.