Massimo Dal Zotto wrote: > I propose also that sensible-browser is registered as preferred or only > handler for text/html and other url mime types. This can obviously be > overriden in personal mailcap files but the debian alternative and the > BROWSER variable should be the preferred control it. I'm not sure about this. It *would* be nice to have BROWSER contol mailcap, but perhaps some browsers would want to set up mailcap files with more complex tests specific to them. Perhaps we should discuss this separatly to the main proposal after it gets in. > > In addition, programs should choose a good default web browser if none > > is selected by the user or system administrator. > > This should be done in a centralized way by sensible-browser. Other programs > should call only sensible-browser, unless they require some specific browser. > If none selects a good default the x-www-browser alternative should do it. > > > Thus, every program that launches a web browser with an URL must use the > > BROWSER environment variable to determine what browser the user wishes > > to use. > > Again, why not just call sensible-browser? A program needing a browser > should simply depend on debianutils and www-browser|x-www-browser. > Parsing the BROWSER variable and substituting the url value in the proper > way in every program seems to me an unnecessary duplication of code. It often may be, and in those cases programs can of course just run the sensible-browser script. On the other hand, they may well want more control over what browser is picked as a fallback if BROWSER is not set or if none of the items in that variable are usable. Or they might want to implement it without a fork for speed, or what have you. It seems best to offer the flexability. Anyway, it paralells completly how the editor and pager stuff works. Colin has a good point too. An update on my patching: I have patches for: lynx w3m links debianutils urlview xchat I won't be messing with mozilla or konqueror, as they are too large, and the necessary changes too trivial. I'll just file wishlist bugs on those. Since I just noticed that xpdf has url support (which never worked, because I don't have bloody netscape installed. Argh!!), I'll be patching it too. I think that's all for me. It would be amusing to grep the whole main distro for things that hardcode netscape. Grepping your own /etc for netscape will also show some things to patch. -- see shy jo
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