Re: browse-url-generic-program not reporting stdout

[Kevin Rodgers]

Dan Jacobson wrote:
> I did (setq browse-url-generic-program "wwwoffle")
> but do not see wwwoffle's "Requesting: http://bla.bla...";
> message which I expect in the minibuffer.
> I suppose stdout isn't interesting to it.
>
> OK, I suppose it detaches etc. so can't talk anymore.
> (I was wanting a way to register urls for later fetching.)

Well, it's definitely intentional: browse-url-generic calls
browse-url-generic-program via start-process and specifies nil as the
BUFFER argument.  In fact, all the browse-url- commands that call
start-process do the same.

You could simply replace those occurrences of nil with a buffer name
that you could display.  And since almost all those commands return the
process object, you could write an after advice that sets the process
filter to a simple function to display the output via message.

Emacs could easily be enhanced with a couple new variables for the user
to customize: browse-url-process-buffer and -filter.

> It would be neat if I was asked to confirm I want to requst the URL too.
> A confirm varible that would trigger a y-or-no p.
> Because these ffap days, it's so easy to do find-file on an URL.

That is something that is trivial for a power user like yourself:

(defadvice browse-url-generic (around y-or-n-p activate)
  "Query the user for confirmation before loading the URL."
  (and (y-or-n-p (format "Load <url:%s>? " (ad-get-arg 0)))
       ad-do-it))

> Wait, I should be able to give differnt lettered responses depending
> on if I want to browse it with firefly, flowerfox or whatever, or
> register it with wwwoffle, or chicken out.

That would require a little more hacking.

--
Kevin Rodgers