[Python-Dev] webbrowser module

[Peter Funk]

Hi, 

Fred L. Drake, Jr. :
> 
> Skip Montanaro writes:
>  > I'm running kde.  From bash I see an environment variable named KDEDIR whose
>  > value is "/usr".  Would that be a possible extra test to assure that kde is
>  > running before deciding to launch kfm?

Clever idea, Skip!  This will also work on SuSE Linux, where I have
KDEDIR=/opt/kde

>   Sounds good!  How about this for the non-MacOS portion of the
> default-browser determination:
> 
> DEFAULT_BROWSER = "command-line"
> 
> if sys.platform[:3] == "win":
>     del _browsers["kfm"]
>     register("windows-default", WindowsDefault)
>     DEFAULT_BROWSER = "windows-default"
> elif os.environ.get("DISPLAY"):
>     if os.environ.get("KDEDIR"):
>         DEFAULT_BROWSER = "kfm"
>     elif _iscommand("netscape"):
>         DEFAULT_BROWSER = "netscape"

I believe there might be some people using KDE on a luxury computer
(like the rolls royce alike that Fred has) and because they don't
have to bother about RAM usage, they still may want to use Netscape
as their default browser under KDE.  
I muust admit that Netscape provides more features and nice bookmark
handling, although the differences might become smaller with KDE 2.x.
That however again will burn more RAM. :-(

Testing for available RAM will only work on Linux on the other hand,
because most other unices lack '/proc/meminfo'.  Using something more
portable like the famous 'wc -c /dev/mem' unix tool abuse hack will
not work due to the obvious lack of read permissions on /dev/mem for
simple user processes.  Adding the proposed AI (heuristic, hack,
rule-of-thumb whatever you want to call it) to choose the default
browser dependent on the amount of installed RAM is quite unpythonic,
or what?  However it is so simple, since Linux and Python are really
powerful here:

    def small_ram():
        """returns True on machines with less than 128 MB Ram"""
        import string, __builtin__
        memtotal = long(string.split(
            __builtin__.open("/proc/meminfo").readlines()[1])[1])
        return memtotal < 128L * 1024 * 1024 # less than 128 MB

May be the best solution would be to test if any of the _browsers, which
support a remote protocol is already running and only fire up a new 
browser, if no browser process can be identified.  This however will break
the current class hierarchy.  So this should be delayed until Python 2.1?

Finally: I like your proposed solution.

Regards, Peter