[Python-Dev] urllib.browse() issues

[Guido van Rossum]

[ESR]
> Environment variables work for Windows users, too -- and I believe
> there's a functionally similar name/value pair facility available
> through system resource forks on the Mac.  I really think a profile
> file is excessively heavyweight here.  Environment variables or X
> resources are a better medium for this kind of shared preference.
> 
> I've actually been seriously thinking, once this is in the Python
> library, of going to the Perl and Tcl people and giving them code that
> would make *their* standard libraries do the right thing with the
> BROWSER variable.  It shouldn't only be portable across Python
> applications, but across scripting languages as well -- something that
> would be much harder to do with an .ini file.

But on Windows, there is already a registry setting to choose the
browser.  No native Windows user (as opposed to transplanted Unix
users like you & me :-) is going to understand why they have to set an
environment variable (something they believe is old-fashioned and
mostly needed for the obscure and -- in their eyes -- equally obscure
"DOS box") to change a preference that the system already knows
perfectly well.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://dinsdale.python.org/~guido/)