Proposal: New /etc/alternatives/www-browser*

["Tille, Andreas" <TilleA@rki.de>]

[Sorry for list-crossposting.  Please continue the discussion at debian-devel
 because the intent was just to *inform* users in debian-{med,jr} not to
 discuss there because /etc/alternatives is a general development topic.]

Hello,

while discussing about Debian Internal Projects with Ben Armstrong
we faced the following problem:

   Users might install a program with a web application on their box
   but do not see any trace how to use it now.  In the best case the
   local administrator will find a hint in
         /usr/share/doc/<package>/README.Debian
   but this is definitely not the case for every web application in
   Debian.  The general user does not have any trace on this box.

   I wanted to implement a menu based solution for Debian-Med:  There
   will be a menu item for *every* application which will be installed
   by a meta-package.  If there is a web application or a doc in HTML
   this menu entry just calls a browser and shows the right URL.

     >>>>        But which browser to call??         <<<<

Moreover Ben mentioned:
> Right.  But I'm not sure it should be /etc/alternatives/www-browser.  That
> implies a default general purpose web browser (which would perhaps be
> expected to do things like javascript well) whereas all we really need is a
> reader for html docs on the system.  I think it would be better to have
> /etc/alternatives/htmlbrowser (similar to infobrowser) which would only need
> to be a lightweight html reader.
Some I come up with a more detailed suggestion:

/etc/alternatives/[www-]browser
/etc/alternatives/[www-]browser-text
/etc/alternatives/[www-]browser-graphical
/etc/alternatives/[www-]browser-frame-enabled
/etc/alternatives/[www-]browser-java-enabled

This would enable to build packages with debian/control entries like:

   Depends: w3m | www-browser
   Depends: lynx | www-browser-text
   Depends: galeon | www-browser-graphical
   ...

and call this in menu entries for web applications like

      phpgroupware     -client
      webmin           -client
      zope             -client
      odontolinux      -client
      ...
      med-*

The "-client" packages mean that we do not have to install phpgroupware etc
for a client, but we could install a hypothetical package phpgroupware-client
which depends from "lynx | www-browser" and has an appropriate menu entry.
If those -client packages would have an appropriate debconf question according
to the host which runs the server (optional changed port) we could provide
some extra comfort to users and administrators.

I would lilke to discuss this idea now here and hope the discussion will
come to some nice conclusion after I'm back from vacation (28.6. to 22.7.).

Kind regards

        Andreas.


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