Hallo, * Martin Read [Sun, Dec 13 2015, 11:18:24AM]: > On 13/12/15 09:19, Eduard Bloch wrote: > >Observation: various programs use the XDG mechanism (freedesktop > >configuration method) to start a specific browser to visit a hyperlink. > >Easy to verify with the xdg-open tool. > > > >But how can I change this setting in a persistent way especially when I > >don't use Gnome or Kde or Xfce? I tried LxQt once and apparently the > >stupid thing has reset some configuration and now xdg-open starts > >Qupzilla which I don't like. Before, some other stupid program has reset > >it to Chromium which I don't like either. > > xdg-open examines your environment to determine what desktop environment (if > any) you are invoking it under, and follows a DE-specific strategy if you're > using one of the DEs it knows about (KDE, LXDE, XFCE, Gnome, Darwin, MATE). > This is an entirely reasonable design decision, but also one that reasonable > people can disagree with.
I didn't realize that it's plain shell script, thanks for mentioning this below. I haven't even checked because I assumed that it's a program using the common glib/kde framework functions to run url/mime handlers. > If you are not using one of the desktop environments it knows about, then it > uses its "generic" approach. For HTTP URLs, the generic approach is "check > the BROWSER environment variable, then try the web browsers in a specified > order if BROWSER isn't set". The first entry in that ordering is www-browser > if DISPLAY is not set, and x-www-browser if DISPLAY *is* set. What you describe is exactly what the sensible-browser script does. And sensible-browser works fine for me, xdg-open does not. What happens for me is that sensible-browser runs x-www-browser (pointing at iceweasel) but xdg-open seems to try different fallbacks first and finds some mime information about for http in /usr/share//applications/mimeinfo.cache (not ok). But anyhow, thanks for mentioning BROWSER variable. It seems to influence glib functions too, so it's just what I need. > xdg-open is written in POSIX shell, so you could easily copy it into a > higher-priority location in your particular user account's PATH and modify > it. I will try to communicate this with the xdg-utils maintainer. IMHO the script should respect the specifics of a system and on Debian consider the configuration of x-www-browser alternative entry rather if it couldn't detect a specific desktop environment. Or maybe do so only if the alternative-link is a non-default setting. Best regards, Eduard.
