Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>]

On Apr 14, 2010, at 9:36 AM, Jeff Clough wrote:
> 
> It does seem lame that it's not looking for Safari, but then I don't
> know if it looks for IE on Windows.  This may be a philosophical point
> and not a technical one, so for better or worse it just might not
> happen.

You are misinformed.  It will use Safari if that's what the system default is.  It is not looking for any specific browser on OS X.  It is doing the right thing and using the browser that the user has configured on their system.  This is actually Safari on the Mac by default.

> I think a case can be made that tampering with a browser-oriented thing
> shouldn't break an email-oriented thing when it is not obvious to the
> end user that that's what's going to happen.  

The command is `browse-url', and it is URL as much as it is BROWSE.  
But you absolutely have a point there - I can see how users may get confused.

> 
> The overall issue of having Emacs get the right answer to "What is your
> mail client?" might still ought to be addressed in a way that doesn't
> rely on browsers at all, 

Once more: as it is now, Emacs does not rely on browsers at all on the Mac in its default configuration.
It uses a system mechanism to handle arbitrary URLs, specifically, mailto: URLs.  This does NOT invoke the browser.  It invokes the system's standard mail client.  

If the user configures a specific browser for Emacs, then yes, we go through the browser, and perhaps that is not the best thing to do in that case.  See my earlier e-mail: bind the browser-function variable to its default before calling browse-url.
 
Are there any cases where this would cause problems?