Re: Bug in Carbon port: browse-url-default-macosx-browser

[David Reitter]

On 24 Nov 2005, at 17:23, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> > The browse-url functions have a bug on OS X: When a local file is   
> > browsed
> > (such as during "Preview Buffer" in HTML(-Helper) mode), the  
> > system will
> > open the file in the application that is the default  handler for
> > .html files.
> > Chances are that this default handler is NOT the default browser,  
> > but an
> > editor such as Emacs itself.
>
> By default .html files are opened in the browser, so if the user  
> changed
> this config, I'd expect that he gets what he wants.  I.e. I'm not  
> convinced
> it's a bug.

Two observations:
1. I installed my customized Emacs on a newly installed OSX 10.4.3,  
which defines html as an allowable extension in its Info.plist. This  
could have been Smultron or BBEdit or whatever alternatively.  
LaunchServices seemed to think that this was supposed to be the  
default handler for HTML files now - if you opened them, they're not  
displayed in the browser, but in the editor. When I chose "view  
buffer contents" in html mode, this didn't work as intended.
I've had the same report from a much more seasoned user a while ago,  
and I didn't believe it until I saw it myself.

2. If html files are opened by default in an editor (a perfectly  
sensible configuration!),  there is still a separate setting for the  
default browser. This is what you see in the Preferences of Camino or  
Safari. This is what "open" uses to open http:// URLs with. If you  
change the default browser, this will not change the HTML file handler.
And that is what browse-url should do when browse-url-browser- 
function is set to 'browse-url-default-macosx-browser. And mind you,  
it is this symbol and not something like 'browse-url-default-html- 
file-handler.

"open" is defined to open http:// URLs with the default browser, but  
file:// URLs with the default handler for the specific file type.