Re: [Reuben Thomas] browse-url.el Opera support

[Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>]

Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> writes:

> Funnily enough, I wouldn't even be involved in this discussion if it
> weren't that browse-url.el sucks anyway: I can't remember another program
> that I've had to throw several kb of script at before it can open URLs in
> my web browser the way I want:

I don't understand `several kb of script', but the point is right.
The current mechanism would have been junked if I'd been able to
continue maintaining browse-url.

> in most programs, I just have to configure
> a string that looks something like
>
> foobrowser -remoteWindow("%u")
>
> and it Just Works.

In most cases, I'd hope you wouldn't have to configure anything.
There should be heuristics to DTRT in common cases, e.g. use
`sensible-browser' (?) in Debian or whatever the environment variable
mechanism was that ESR proposed -- he does write some useful things.

Emacs shouldn't know about the specific browser you're using (except,
perhaps, when you want to run it in an Emacs window).  Doing anything
else just clobbers free software users, who surely have more free
browsers available than proprietary ones.  It's especially galling
that Emacs on MS Windows (as I understand it) does sort-of DTRT, if
invoking Internet Exploiter could be considered right.

browse-url should still be able to intercept and DTRT with mailto: &c,
of course.