On Jan 27, 2010, at 3:31 PM, Timur Tabi wrote:
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Mitchell L Model
<mlm...@comcast.net> wrote:
I had some discussions with the Python documentation writers that
led to the
following note being included in the Python 3.1 library
documentation for
webbrowser.open: "Note that on some platforms, trying to open a
filename
using this function, may work and start the operating system’s
associated
program. However, this is neither supported nor portable."
Then they should have renamed the API. I appreciate that they're
finally documenting this, but I still think it's a bunch of baloney.
I agree, but I am pretty sure that, based on the discussions I had
with the Python
documenters and developers, that there's no hope of winning this
argument.
I suppose that since a file: URL is not, strictly speaking, on the
web, that it
shouldn't be opened with a "web" browser. It's just that the "web"
part of
"web browser" became more or less obsolete a long time ago since there
are so many more ways of using browsers and so many more things they can
do then just browse the web. So if you interpret the name "webbrowser"
to mean
that it browses the web, as opposed to files, which means going
through some
kind of server-based protocol, the module does what it says. But I
still like
the idea of using it to open files, especially when I want the file to
be opened
by its associated application and not a browser.
You can control which browser opens the URL by using webbrowser.get
to
obtain a controller for a particular browser, specified by its
argument,
then call the open method on the controller instead of the module.
How can I know which controller (application) the system will use when
it opens an http URL? I depend on webbrowser.open('http') to choose
the best web browser on the installed system. Does webbrowser.get()
tell me which application that will be?
webbrowser.get() with no arguments gives you the default kind of
browser controller, just as if you had used webbrowser.open()
directly.
For opening files reliability and the ability to pick a particular
program
(browser or otherwise) to open it with you might have to resort to
invoking
a command line via subprocess.Popen.
But that only works if I know which application to open.
Aha. You could use subprocess to specify the application from within
your Python code,
but not to indicate "the user's default browser", unless the platform
has a command for that.
On OS X, for instance, the command line:
open file.html
opens file.html with the application the user has associated with html
files, whereas
open -a safari file.html
will open it with Safari even if the user has chosen Firefox for html
files. There's
stuff like this for Windows, I suppose, but hardly as convenient. And
I think that
Linux environments are all over the place on this, but I'm not sure.
webbrowser.get() returns a control object of the default class for the
user's environment --
the one that means "use the default browser" so it won't help.
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