Selecting several files and hitting Enter only opens one of them

[teo1978]

* Nemo version (nemo --version) 4.4.2
 * Is issue with desktop or windowed nemo? Desktop
 * Distribution - Ubuntu 20.04
 * Graphics hardware *and* driver used: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller and NVIDIA Corporation GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M] (don't know about the driver since it doesn't show up in System Info)
 * 64 bit

Issue

Steps to reproduce

• Open a folder in Nemo
• Select multiple files
• Hit the Enter key

Expected behaviour

Should open all the selected files with their default application (whether it's the same for all or not)

Observed behavior

Only opens one of the selected files

Other information

[Jeremy7701]

No fault could be reproduced in nemo 4.6.4 on LMDE4

Selected multiple PDF files; pressing enter caused opening multiple copies of evince ["Document Viewer"]
Selected 5 text files; pressing enter caused opening of a single copy of xed ["Text Editor"] - but with 5 appropriate tabs.

[ferdnyc]

@Jeremy7701

I guess one question would be, what happens if you select three text files and two PDF files, then hit Enter?

It sounds like @teo1978 may be using an application that advertises as supporting multiple URLs/files (%F or %U in the Exec= line of its .desktop file), so they all get passed to it, but then it ignores all but the first one.

I just tried something similar in Nemo 4.6.4 on Fedora 32 — I selected two JPGs, a PNG, a GIF, and a ZIP, and then hit Enter. What I got was:

• A file-roller window containing the ZIP file
• A gthumb window with all four images open in it.

So, yeah, it seems like Nemo will do exactly the right thing, if apps are configured properly. It's likely a problem with how the default app is configured on your system (in its .desktop file) for one of the file types you had selected, @teo1978. (Or maybe a Nemo 4.4.2 defect that's been fixed since.)

[Jeremy7701]

O.K I selected:-
2 text files
1 sqlite file
1 tar.gz file
1 zip file
1 deb file
then pressed enter.
I expected 5 Windows to be opened, but unexpectedly, nemo warned me that 4 seperate applications would be opened, if I continued...
So there is a tiny bug there...
Pressing enter did indeed open FIVE windows.

[ferdnyc]

Hey, man, counting is hard. You've gotta figure out what digit to start from, then keep them all in the right order, be careful not to skip any...

[mtwebster]

It said 4 applications, not 4 windows. The zip and tar.gz files are both opened by the same application (usually file-roller).

I'm just explaining what's happening here. Nemo doesn't think there are 5 applications because there technically aren't - file-roller opens additional windows for multiple files, but they are all part of the same instance of file-roller.

2 text files - editor
1 sqlite file - ??
2 archive files - fileroller
1 deb file - gdebi

It's not possible to know how each app will behave, or handle multiple arguments (as mentioned previously), so nemo can't predict how many windows an application might open, it's simply passing file names along to the appropriate handler.