cygwin browse-url bug

cygwin browse-url bug

[Bruce Ingalls]

I'm not sure where to report this bug.
cygwin-apps?
emacs?
author of browse-url?
all of the above?

Here's the problem:
On most systems, I can run emacs -q and eval the lines below,
and the browser will show the google usenet archives just fine.

With Emacs on Cygwin, no matter whether I use console or X Window, 
Firebird does launch, but it does not load the URI as an argument.
Instead, the homepage comes up.
Is the problem that I am launching a native Windows app from Cygwin?
Also, is there a way to tell Cygwin to launch the _default_ w32 browser? 
This likely requires a registry key lookup.

I heard that the new Thunderbird 0.4 now launches the 'default' Linux 
browser. How does one find such a default on Linux-like systems?

-- code follows --
(require 'browse-url)
(defconst browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-netscape)
;;Assume the correct path to Firebird; it does launch
(defconst browse-url-netscape-program
  "c:/Program Files/MozillaFirebird/MozillaFirebird.exe")
(browse-url "http://groups.google.com/")

Re: cygwin browse-url bug

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Bruce Ingalls <bingalls@fit-zones.NO-SPAM.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 17:24:19 GMT
> 
> I'm not sure where to report this bug.
> cygwin-apps?
> emacs?
> author of browse-url?
> all of the above?

Who knows? but see below.

> Here's the problem:
> On most systems, I can run emacs -q and eval the lines below,
> and the browser will show the google usenet archives just fine.
> 
> With Emacs on Cygwin, no matter whether I use console or X Window, 
> Firebird does launch, but it does not load the URI as an argument.
> Instead, the homepage comes up.
> Is the problem that I am launching a native Windows app from Cygwin?

I'm guessing that Cygwin invokes the browser with a URL that is
munged by the file-name transformation stuff.  I'd try to write a
simple application that prints its command-line arguments, then force
Emacs to invoke that application as a Web browser, and see what args
it gets from Emacs.

Perhaps then you will know where to complain about this ;-)

Re: cygwin browse-url bug

[Bruce Ingalls]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>From: Bruce Ingalls <bingalls@fit-zones.NO-SPAM.com>
>>On most systems, I can run emacs -q and eval the lines below,

>>Firebird does launch, but it does not load the URI as an argument.
>>Instead, the homepage comes up.

> 
> I'm guessing that Cygwin invokes the browser with a URL that is
> munged by the file-name transformation stuff.

There are no file names to transform. MozillaFirebird.exe is in my PATH, 
and is invoked as
	MozillaFirebird http://groups.google.com/

In fact, the browser does launch. It just doesn't load Google.
The syntax I gave works everywhere. It even works with the dillo 
browser, which is part of the cygnome distro.
BTW, browse-url does not support links, because 'lynx' is hard-coded.

Cygwin lynx works only with Cygwin-style paths, when a file:// URL is used.

Native w32 browsers launched from cygwin emacs shell work fine with w32 
file:// paths, but not even http:// URIs work from browse-url.

Re: cygwin browse-url bug

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Bruce Ingalls <bingalls@fit-zones.NO-SPAM.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:27:56 GMT
> 
> > I'm guessing that Cygwin invokes the browser with a URL that is
> > munged by the file-name transformation stuff.
> 
> There are no file names to transform. MozillaFirebird.exe is in my PATH, 
> and is invoked as
> 	MozillaFirebird http://groups.google.com/

Are you sure that "http://groups.google.com/" is indeed the argument
that MozillaFirebird.exe gets in your case?  If so, my assumptions was
wrong, and some other factor is at work here.

What I meant to say is that there's a possibility that the presence of
"//" in the file name causes some cygwin magic kick in that is
supposed to transform cygwin-style file names to Windows-style, even
though the argument to the browser is a URL, not a file name.

HTH

Re: cygwin browse-url bug

[Jason Rumney]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:

> What I meant to say is that there's a possibility that the presence of
> "//" in the file name causes some cygwin magic kick in that is
> supposed to transform cygwin-style file names to Windows-style, even
> though the argument to the browser is a URL, not a file name.

I think either that, or Firebird works differently under W32 than
Unix (eg using DDE instead of command line options), and browse-url
is coded to assume the command-line options will work.