Re: Rename `eww' to `web'

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 05:55:52 -0400 Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> wrote: 

>> emacs -Q
>> C-x C-f http://www.gnu.org

>> I see the HTML code verbatim.

SM> That's arguably right.

>> The buffer is on Org mode.  (This is a buglet).

SM> Actually, it's the main problem: url-handler-mode only affects the way
SM> files are accessed, but not the way we try to find/guess meta-data, so
SM> the HTTP header's info (mostly Content-Type:) is completely ignored and
SM> instead we rely on the URL itself via auto-mode-alist.

SM> It would be nice to extend url-handler-mode so that the meta-info from
SM> things the transfer protocol gets preserved and used to choose the
SM> major mode.

I would rather just open URLs the same way consistently with `eww' than
try to guess what treatment each one merits.  `eww' or other web
browsers should DTRT once they get the content and the headers.

>> ISTM the magic glue to render - I used shr-render-buffer - is
>> missing.

SM> This is yet another needed change, which is to make it show a rendering,
SM> just like opening a PDF file gives us the rendering (via doc-view)
SM> by default.

Opening a HTML *file* should open it as a file, and rendering should be
easily accessible in a menu (through `shr' or whatever).  A PDF is not
the same use case, because viewing and editing a binary PDF as a file is
pretty useless.

Opening a URL may produce HTML or something else, but there's no editing
model here--you can't write back a URL (yeah, there's PUT, and for file:
URLs you can open the actual file, but let's stick to the common case).

So I think it makes sense to go straight to `eww' for that case: opening
a URL with `C-x C-f'.  Like I said, it's DWIMmery.  There will be a
small percentage of users unhappy with it, who will want to just view
the file, and we should make that easy (I guessed `find-file-literally'
incorrectly but it can be something simple to set in `url-handler-mode'
defcustoms).  The key thing is that there are no command names to
discover--opening a URL Just Works.

Any of the developers can make the change easily but it's a pretty major
change and that's why we're discussing it instead of just doing it.  I
hope you agree with me.

Ted