[Python-Dev] urllib.browse() issues

[Eric S. Raymond]

Guido van Rossum <guido@beopen.com>:
> 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.

In my design the environment variable is only there as an optional override.
Most of the time, the smart defaults do the right thing.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit 
the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms.  History teaches that all 
conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have 
prepared their own downfall by doing so.
        -- Hitler, April 11 1942, revealing the real agenda of "gun control"