Bug#54524: http_proxy and web clients.

[Matthew Vernon <matthew@sel.cam.ac.uk>]

 > This is already standard, but I think it should be into policy because I
 > already saw some programs deviating from this expected behaviour.

I'm not aware of netscrape doing this, for example. And it's better to
use /etc/lynx.conf to make lynx do it too, as it prevents lusers
forgetting to configure a proxy.
 
 > Web clients should default to try to fetch URLs by a direct connection to
 > the target host. If the `http_proxy' variable is defined, it should specify

Nope. I am writing a web client that connects to a local proxy server
ATM as it happens; RFC2068 explains that you should use proxies
wherever possible rather than connecting direct to the target server.

I think your ideas may be suitable for wishlist bugs against packages
that don't do what you want, but it shouldn't go into policy.

Regards,

Matthew

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