[xmonad] Add 'browser' to XConfig

[gwern0 at gmail.com]

On 2008.03.31 07:58:52 -0700, David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net> scribbled 2.2K characters:
> On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 11:45:33PM -0400, gwern0 at gmail.com wrote:
> > Why am I constantly supplying Firefox as a parameter? Well, the answer is
> > that those functions *need* a browser to use, they can't get away with
> > getting it from somewhere else. There is no somewhere else, as there is
> > no POSIX standard way of letting a user define a preferred browser (yes,
> > I know about Debian's x-www-browser stuff, but that's Debian, and I know
> > about environmental variables, but I don't think there's any standard
> > $BROWSER like there is $HOME or $EDITOR).
>
> Why not just use BROWSER even though it isn't commonly defined? Just define
> a
>
> getBrowser = getEnv "BROWSER" `catch` \_ -> return "firefox"
>
> and it's still just one line (well, plus an import) to define a default
> browser in xmonad.hs by calling setEnv in the startupHook (or in main
> before calling xmonad).  And lo, users are now also able to define their
> browser preferences in a non-xmonad-specific location!

Yes, if anything else uses $BROWSER...

> I don't like the idea of cluttering up XConfig with this sort of thing.
> I'd rather see the terminal pref removed (it seems silly for all the same
> reasons) than another pref (that's only used in contrib) added to the core
> of xmonad.

Well, that would be a second best. Consistency is a good thing here if we can't agree to my suggestion.

I would prefer both browser and terminal; they are both general interfaces, they are both universally used (heck, browser might be even more common - I could see many people not using terminals though they use browsers), and so on. The only other similarly used genres of programs are editors (covered by $EDITOR) and mail clients (are mail programs handled by env vars?). It's an easy two-line change at its most flagrant, and so on.

> If you prefer, we could alternately support XMONAD_BROWSER.  Note that
> putting the browser in the environment would also make it immediately
> runtime-configurable (well, with a few lines of code in contrib).
> --
> David Roundy

See my other email about runtime-configurable; I think what would actually be runtime configurable is my suggestion (make it modifiable in xmonad.hs, not the shell configs).

--
gwern
BVD forces AOL IACIS CCSQ SNT 414 rsta NRC Geraldton
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