Re: [Gaim-devel] some browser patches

[Robert M. <rob...@de...>]

On Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 08:05:47PM -1000, Ray Strode wrote:
> Attached are two patches.
> One of the patches hides browsers that arent installed from the 
> preferences menu.  It also adds a Set and Reset button to the Manual 
> browser entry, so that the entry can be validated, too.

Considering this was my suggestion, great! I'm gathering from other text
entry boxes in prefs that it's not possible to validate the entry
automatically very easily? Is there some event we can hook to when the
Browser pane is switched away from, as well as the obvious dialog box
closure?

> The other patch switches browser.c over to the g_spawn_* api, adds error 
> messages, and fixes a bug that was preventing the gaim interface from 
> redrawing under certain situations if Netscape is the configured 
> browser.  Note I cant get netscape 4.x to work on my computer, so I 
> wasnt able to test it with that browser (and there is some pretty 
> complicated code for talking to that browser).

I'm all for this patch too. Great cleanups.

> Another issue.  It seems that browser.c currently uses some code that is 
> from netscape/jwz and the original code specifies that the copyright and 
> permission notice must remain in tact.  browser.c has the copyright 
> notice, but it doesnt have the permission notice.  Furthermore, I dont 
> think it could because it conflicts with the gpl.
> 
> Also, the offending code has to jump through some hoops to coexist with 
> Gtk+ and it really is quite ugly.
> 
> I think it would be better to just bundle a helper program with gaim and 
> use that if netscape is installed (maybe use the program that the code 
> was taken from).  That solves the GPL issue and the asthetics issue.

Copyright aside (I've suspected browser.c for about a year =), I think
we can drop netscape support. It's ugly, it has questionable copyright,
the browser sucks, there are plenty popular free replacements, nobody
ships it any more, and nobody I know uses it. GNOME dropped it too 
(they had a helper called gnome-moz-remote which they canned in
GNOME2). Anyone object if we just drop Netscape support? We could nuke
browser.c and put the URL function in util.c then. =)

> --Ray Strode

With the patch, you seem to have reverted a bunch of gtk_signal_connect
-> g_signal_connect changes that have been made in CVS. Please use 'cvs
diff -u' to generate your patches from a modified CVS tree, rather than
editing files out of place and then diffing with a CVS tree which could
contain other irrelevant changes. Editing in place means CVS will merge
your changes with the ones in the repository as best it can. Even so,
it's always a good idea to page through your patch and make sure all the
hunks are meaningful. There are always a few I delete out of mine.

Otherwise, great work. I wonder what else on my TODO list you'd be
interested in? =)

Regards,
Rob