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

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2010, 00:42 UTC
Message-ID: <20101204004225.GA15906@burratino>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinWD53M2VjiWgeA0Qwx3OHzR2A09Y+AB2B9o1df@mail.gmail.com>

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.

> 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?