CastorisCausa

Personal blog and hacks by Raymundo Cassani

Matlab file association in Linux

In contrast to Matlab for Windows and macOS, Matlab for Linux does not automatically make the associations with its related files .m, .mat, and .fig. This post describes the how to do the association, it includes: 1. defining MIME types, 2. setting icons, and 3. creating desktop entries (.desktop files to define Matlab as the application for these MIME types). I'm using Cinnamon as desktop environment (thus it should work in Gnome without changes), and Arch Linux distribution.

Matlab shortcut in main Menu and Desktop

This is not necessary for the association, but it may play useful.

  1. Copy Matlab icon file from the Matlab installation directory to the shared icons

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    # cp /usr/local/MATLAB/R2020b/bin/glnxa64/cef_resources/matlab_icon.png /usr/share/icons

  2. Create a matlab_2020b.desktop file at /usr/share/applications

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    [Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=MATLAB 2020b
Icon=/usr/share/icons/matlab_icon.png
Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2020b/bin/matlab -desktop
Categories=Development
Terminal=false

  3. Change the permissions to be executable:

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    # chmod +x matlab_r2020b.desktop

  4. For the Desktop shortcut, just copy this matlab_2020b.desktop to ~/Desktop

In this post describes the how to do the association, it includes: defining MIME types, setting icons, and creating desktop entries (.desktop files to define Matlab as the application for these MIME types). I'm using Cinnamon as desktop environment (thus it should work in Gnome without changes), and Arch Linux distribution.

Associate .m, .mat and .fig files with Matlab

1. MIME types

The MIME type for Matlab .m files is part of the freedesktop.org.xml file which is present in /usr/share/mime/packages/. Thus let's create the MIME types for .mat and .fig.

  1. Create the file /usr/share/mime/packages/matlab-typemimes.xml

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    <mime-info xmlns='http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info'>
    <mime-type type="image/x-matlab-fig">
        <comment>MATLAB figure</comment>
        <magic priority="50">
             <match value="MATLAB" type="string" offset="0"/>
        </magic>
        <glob pattern="*.fig" weight="60"/>
        <generic-icon name="matlab-fig"/>
    </mime-type>
    <mime-type type="application/x-matlab-data">
        <comment>MATLAB data file</comment>
        <magic priority="50">
             <match value="MATLAB" type="string" offset="0"/>
        </magic>
        <glob pattern="*.mat" weight="60"/>
        <generic-icon name="matlab-mat"/>
    </mime-type>
</mime-info>

    This MIME definition is based on https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2010-October/011673.html

  2. Update MIME database :::bash # update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

2. Icons

The icons for .mat and .fig files is set to be the same as for .m files. In /usr/share/icons/, copy all the instances of text-x-matlab.svg as image-x-matlab-fig.svg and application-x-matlab-data.svg. And Run gtk-update-icon-cache for each of the icon directories.

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# find /usr/share/icons -name text-x-matlab.svg -execdir echo cp {} image-x-matlab-fig.svg ';'
# find /usr/share/icons -name text-x-matlab.svg -execdir echo cp {} application-x-matlab-data-svg ';'
# find -maxdepth 1 -type d -execdir gtk-update-icon-cache {} ';'

3. Desktop entries

Different Matlab files are called in different way by MATLAB:

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matlab -desktop -r "edit %f;"
matlab -desktop -r "uiimport %f;"
matlab -desktop -r "openfig %f;"

As such, it is necessary to create a desktop entry file for each MIME type reflecting how Matlab is called to open such MIME files. These files will be created in /usr/share/applications

File matlab_2020b_m.desktop

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Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2020b/bin/matlab -desktop -r "edit %f;"
MimeType=text/x-matlab
NoDisplay=true

File matlab_2020b_mat.desktop

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Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2020b/bin/matlab -desktop -r "uiimport %f;"
MimeType=application/x-matlab-data
NoDisplay=true

File matlab_2020b_fig.desktop

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Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2020b/bin/matlab -desktop -r "openfig %f;"
MimeType=image/x-matlab-fig
NoDisplay=true

The NoDisplay=true prevents that these desktop entry files appear in the main Menu.

Conclusion

Now the different Matlab files are associated with Matlab and opening them in the file explorer creates a new instance of Matlab and opens the selected file. Opening the file occurs in a new instance of Matlab (link), In the future I'll look for alternatives to open the file in the current Matlab instance.

References

MIME types
Desktop entries
Matlab MIME types
Adding MIME types in Gnome

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