[texworks] what is a default browser?

[Paul A Norman]

Stefan,

> the following things are
> tried:
> 1) `xdg-open`
> 2) `gnome-open` or `kfmclient exec` (depending on desktop environment)
> 3) firefox
> 4) mozilla
> 5) netscape
> 6) opera
>
> (note that this applies to local files (file:// protocol).

Always wondered why Tw help/ manual opens in Firefox for me when it is
not my default browser.

Would that mean that a person on Windows with only IE or Chrome might
not get anything for the Tw Manual? Or have I missed a beat here...

Paul

On 15 July 2011 17:19, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2011-07-15 06:34, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
>
> recently TeXworks provides nice manual and we can see
> it from menu with a browser.
>
> But, strangely, on one of my Debian system it calls
> /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome as a browser and,
> because there is no such browser on my system, it fails
> to show me a manual.  (On another system, it works fine.)
>
> I investigated various methods to define a default browser,
> like x-www-browser, gconf-editor etc. but no success.
>
> I'd like to know how TeXworks selects a default browser
> for manual and if we can define it at compile time.
>
> TeXworks uses QDesktopServices::openUrl (src/TWApp.cpp at 305), documented at
> http://doc.trolltech.com/latest/qdesktopservices.html#openUrl
> That resource just states "Opens the given url in the appropriate Web
> browser for the user's desktop environment".
>
> Digging into the Qt source code (Qt 4.7.2,
> src/util/gui/qdesktopservices_x11.cpp) suggests the following things are
> tried:
> 1) `xdg-open`
> 2) `gnome-open` or `kfmclient exec` (depending on desktop environment)
> 3) firefox
> 4) mozilla
> 5) netscape
> 6) opera
>
> (note that this applies to local files (file:// protocol). For others, the
> DEFAULT_BROWSER and BROWSER environment variable are tried between attempts
> 1) and 2).
>
> So, you probably know better how to configure these tools than I do, but it
> should get you started in the right direction :).
>
> HTH
> Stefan
>