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

[David Reitter]

On 24 Nov 2005, at 21:03, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> > 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'm not sure I understand correctly.  Are you saying that  
> installing Emacs
> causes it to become the default handler for HTML files?  If so, it  
> sounds
> like a bug to me.

I don't know about Emacs, as I installed Aquamacs Emacs.
But I don't think there is a bug, it's just normal OS X behavior.  
Either way, it's not the bug I'm trying to fix here.

> > 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.
>
> I understand the difference, of course.  I'm just trying to  
> understand why
> it's so important: while it's a valid config, it shouldn't be the  
> default.

Well, I don't know how important it is, but what I do know is that  
out-of-the-box, HTML previewing may silently fail or start up the  
wrong program. I've had people complain, and I've seen it happen  
myself. The reason why it works in most cases is that most people  
have HTML files linked to some browser by default.

The other case where the browser preview will fail completely is when  
the user saves an html-mode buffer to a file with a totally different  
extension, say, .shtml or something with a typo. Then, browse-url  
will definitely open the wrong application!

The bug is due a flaw in the implementation of  browse-url-default- 
macosx-browser. I already said what the mistake is (using "open" to  
open a URL of the form file:// ).

What application is associated with HTML is pretty much up to the  
user. They can set that up in Finder. What the default is is up to  
LaunchServices AFAIK and not a matter of the application side of  
things, so that's nothing I'm worrying about right now.