[27213] in Athena Bugs
Re: linux 9.4.47: htmlview
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Thu Jul 17 17:01:13 2008
Message-Id: <70947A85-FE61-4635-A5C1-B8D43639DBAB@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@mit.edu>
To: bugs@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <7DD4496D-8505-486C-8096-D01C0BF48EC7@mit.edu>
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Further further investigation reveals that this is Firefox's fault.
If you use Firefox's "Make this my default browser" feature, it will
set the gconf key to:
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox "%s"
Rendering Natuilus, htmlview, and help unusable.
I was able to reproduce this by setting my gconf key to a bogus value,
and then select "Yes", when firefox prompted me to make it the default
browser.
So, I don't know what we want to do about this, if anything. I
suppose we could put a "fix-firefox" in the release or consult
locker(s) or something that set the key correctly.
-Jon
On Jul 17, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Jonathan Reed wrote:
> Further investigation reveals that it's not just htmlview - having
> the %s quoted in the url-handler breaks anything attempting to use
> the URL handler, including, for example, double-clicking on .html
> files in Nautilus.
>
> I haven't investigated this further, so I don't know what changed or
> when, but it seems like a lot more people than I initially thought
> have the argument quoted in their url-handler command.
>
> -Jon
>
> On Jul 17, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Jonathan D Reed wrote:
>
>> System name: infinite-loop.mit.edu
>> Type and version: i686 9.4.47 (with mkserv)
>> Display type: Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated
>> Graphics Controller (rev 04)
>>
>> Shell: /bin/athena/tcsh
>> Window manager: metacity
>>
>> What were you trying to do?
>>
>> Run htmlview on a URL (via "help", in this case)
>>
>> What's wrong:
>>
>> htmlview fails if the %s argument in the http url-handler is
>> quoted. It attempts to display the URL as though it were a file
>> in
>> `pwd`.
>>
>> What should have happened:
>>
>> It should have worked
>>
>> Please describe any relevant documentation references:
>>
>> It appears that a non-zero number of people have their
>> url-handler http command set to: /usr/lib/firefox/firefox "%s"
>> I'm not sure why, perhaps an artifact of several GNOME
>> migrations. Regardless, in this case, the argument appears to
>> passed to firefox in its quoted form, which for some reason
>> causes firefox to interpret it as a file, not a URL.
>>
>> I haven't tracked down exactly at what point the quotes cause it
>> to fail, and I suspect no one cares, but I figured I'd report it.
>
