[racket] help browser other than "open" in OS X

From: Eli Barzilay (eli at barzilay.org)
Date: Thu Jun 2 10:59:32 EDT 2011

20 minutes ago, Jose A. Ortega Ruiz wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 02 2011, Eli Barzilay wrote:
> > In any case, if the winds blow towards implementing it, then the
> > main issue with the unix setup is that it's a bunch of half-baked
> > hacks that know how to invoke a set of browsers, catering to each
> > browser's quirks -- and I would love to see all of that go away
> > when `xdg-open' or whatever becomes popular enough to rely on.  So
> > if this is added, I'd like to see it done via
> >
> > * a new configuration option that has just the path to a binary to
> >   be executed with the URL as a single command-line argument
> >
> > * the option can then be ignored by drracket so it becomes a
> >   power-user thing
> >
> > * and for the same reason the simple single argument thing works:
> >   if it's intended to be used by power users, they can just as
> >   well write a script that will do whatever's needed.
> >
> > (As you can see, I don't like the UI for setting the unix option
> > manually -- it has been the source of *many* confusions.)
> 
> All of those seem reasonable requirements to me.

That would be simple, but I'd prefer to wait and see if there's anyone
else who would want that (or who has objection) -- *but*:

> Anyway, what i would *really* like to have is a racket help function
> that, instead of calling a preconfigured browser, returned the URL
> to be browsed (much as 'help' now actually prints it).  With that,
> i'd hack what i need in Elisp/Geiser, and wouldn't mess with
> DrRacket's preferences (i just thought that it'd be easier to change
> the later since the functionality is already available for linux).

this sounds like a more reasonable extension to me.  (It would require
looking at more code, but overall I think that it's a better
direction.)  So I take it that if you have this then you won't need
the above, right?

BTW, it won't be a function -- it has to be a syntax.  What I'm
thinking of is some "just return the url" parameter that you could
turn on, and `help' would evaluate to the url string instead of taking
you there.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!


Posted on the users mailing list.