Re: [PATCHv2 6/7] web--browse: use (x-)www-browser if available

[Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
> Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
>
>> I do believe that Debian encourages the use of sensible-browser (that
>> does the BROWSER and *www-browser check itself) rather than manually
>> going to look at those specifications.
>
> My impression (by analogy with policy §11.4 "Editors and pagers") is
> that one is encouraged to make the default configurable at compile
> time and use
>
>  - first $BROWSER
>  - then something desktop-specific
>  - then the configured default
>
> and set that default to www-browser or x-www-browser, depending on
> whether your program uses X.  That way, non-Debian systems benefit
> from the changes you introduce, too.

I'm not entirely sure how non-Debian would benefit from the change at
the current state, but I'm willing to present patches for the
mechanism offered by other distributions (e.g. does anybody know how
RedHad/Fedora sets the preferred browser?)

>> An alternative approach would be to get rid of the *www-browser and
>> BROWSER patches, and just use xdg-open if it's available. Which again
>> raises the issue of how to enforce opening the page in a new tab.
>
> Yes, in this case that is the ideal (assuming xdg-utils has wide
> enough adoption).
>
> I think xdg-open has just as much a reason as we do to encourage
> opening the page in a new tab.  Would it be hard to make that happen?

I have no idea. Also, it's sort-of outside the scope of our reach, and
we would have to wait for a change in that effect to 'trickle down'.

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta