bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Stefan Kangas]

Severity: minor

Is url-about.el useful?  I note that evaluating this works:

    (pop-to-buffer (url-retrieve-synchronously "about:protocols"))

However, when I try to view that HTML in EWW like so, it does not work:

    M-x eww RET about:protocols RET

I just get a buffer saying "Loading http://about:protocols/...", but not
the expected list of protocols.

I think this should either be fixed to work in EWW, or we should decide
that url-about.el is no longer useful and therefore mark it obsolete.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> Is url-about.el useful?  I note that evaluating this works:
>
>     (pop-to-buffer (url-retrieve-synchronously "about:protocols"))

I can't imagine anybody would ever use this.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> I think this should either be fixed to work in EWW

Now done.  So it should not be obsoleted.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text
editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

>> I think this should either be fixed to work in EWW
>
> Now done.  So it should not be obsoleted.

No, it's still useless, so it should be obsoleted.  (And the eww change
should be reverted.)

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text
> editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>> I think this should either be fixed to work in EWW
>>
>> Now done.  So it should not be obsoleted.
>
> No, it's still useless, so it should be obsoleted.  (And the eww change
> should be reverted.)

What other way of viewing the provided information is there?  I'm
personally only interested in having a nice formatted method of viewing
`url-proxy-services', and IIRC this did work before.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> What other way of viewing the provided information is there?  I'm
> personally only interested in having a nice formatted method of viewing
> `url-proxy-services', and IIRC this did work before.

`url-proxy-services' is a normal defcustom, so you can view it via `C-h
v' or Customize, like any other variable.

Having about:foo in url.el is cute, but it emulates browsers that had
no other way to specify stuff like this.  Emacs is much more powerful
than that.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> `url-proxy-services' is a normal defcustom, so you can view it via `C-h
> v' or Customize, like any other variable.

It's certainly not as pleasant to view that way as in the neatly
formatted about:protocols page.

> Having about:foo in url.el is cute, but it emulates browsers that had
> no other way to specify stuff like this.  Emacs is much more powerful
> than that.

But why is such "power" a reason to remove the about:protocols URL? What
harm is being done by keeping it there?

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> But why is such "power" a reason to remove the about:protocols URL? What
> harm is being done by keeping it there?

The harm is that we have to maintain it.  If it's useless (and this
patently is, since it hasn't worked probably in decades, and nobody has
complained, so nobody had a use for it), it should be obsoleted.

So I'm now doing that.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> The harm is that we have to maintain it.

I didn't see any maintenance happening, yet it still worked.  Had Stefan
not gone out of his way to find it, we would not even be having this
discussion right now.

I tend to find that whether or not a piece of obscure old code in Emacs
works doesn't depend on how much maintenance it gets, but what state it
was in when it was first installed.

Case in point: the OffiX and old KDE code in x-dnd.el, which nobody
uses, has existed without changes for a comparable amount of time, and
still worked perfectly when it was tested several months ago.  However,
the XDND and Motif code has always had serious bugs that were only fixed
in the past few months, despite being actively maintained.

Or the entire NS port, which despite active maintenance (and use by a
large amount of people) could not display mouse-highlight and italic
text correctly.  The MS-DOS port in Emacs 28.1 is in a much better state
compared to the NS port, despite work on it being limited to biennial
build fixes.

> If it's useless (and this patently is, since it hasn't worked probably
> in decades

It has worked fine since it was installed in 2002.  eww came after.

> and nobody has complained

I am now.

> So I'm now doing that.

Why?  As I already said, there _is_ a use for it.  Is there another way
to obtain information about supported URL schemes, their ports,
services, and the proxies that apply to them, all in a single page?

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Why?  As I already said, there _is_ a use for it.  Is there another way
> to obtain information about supported URL schemes, their ports,
> services, and the proxies that apply to them, all in a single page?

If that's something that somebody wants, then writing a new command like
`url-describe-schemes' (that uses the *Help* machinery) would be the
natural thing to do.  I haven't really seen anybody (else) request that,
though.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Why?  As I already said, there _is_ a use for it.  Is there another way
>> to obtain information about supported URL schemes, their ports,
>> services, and the proxies that apply to them, all in a single page?
>
> If that's something that somebody wants, then writing a new command like
> `url-describe-schemes' (that uses the *Help* machinery) would be the
> natural thing to do.

Why can't we keep what already exists, instead of forcing people to
replace it with something else? That's sounds deliberately annoying to
people.

bug#56885: Fix url-about.el in EWW or make it obsolete

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Why can't we keep what already exists, instead of forcing people to
> replace it with something else? That's sounds deliberately annoying to
> people.

Since the code didn't really work, nobody's using it, and nobody's
getting annoyed.