Allow opening URLs without explicit command line switch

[GSI]

The issue:

BROWSER='uzbl-browser -u'
$BROWSER http://uzbl.org
# => zsh: command not found: uzbl-browser -u

To avoid this, simply running uzbl-browser http://uzbl.org (without -u/--uri) should be possible.

[keis]

Looks like this was intentionally removed by 520fbf and upgrading.md tells the same story.

For `uzbl-core`, a URI must now use the `--uri` flag; the first non-flag
argument is no longer interpreted as a URI (this is to avoid confusion of what
should be loaded with `uzbl-core --uri page1 page2`).

So I'm a bit hesitant to simply restore this. But maybe removing -u is a better option. WDYT @mathstuf ?

[mathstuf]

Without specifying what should happen with uzbl-core page1 page2, I'd rather keep it under -u.

[GSI]

Maybe generall accept one and only one URI? `uzbl-core page1 page2` would open just page1 and generate a warning regarding the rest.

[keis]

I guess we could recommmend people to configure BROWSER to xdg-open and then set uzbl as the default browser.

Also just discovered we need some extra bits for the desktop file for that to work

[GSI]

I don't quite get the issue with just ditching -u / --uri altogether (?)

The expected behaviour of $BROWSER $uri is to open the given URI.
(Of the ones I tested, uzbl is the only one not doing so.)

Requiring an additional flag causes known and future issues.

@keis wrote:

I guess we could recommmend people to configure BROWSER to xdg-open and then set uzbl as the default browser.

Bad idea :) (xdg-open is not a BROWSER)

My xdg-open replacement, for example, executes $BROWSER for any URL provided. So that would create a loop unless I (and every other linopen-user) "cripples" their config by explicitly naming $their_currently_preferred_browser.

[mathstuf]

So it seems other browsers open all URLs given on the command line. uzbl-core only supports one. uzbl-tabbed and uzbl-browser could take multiples on the command line, but I don't think uzbl-core itself should.

[keis]

@GSI ok, fair point

I wouldn't worry too much about multiple uris as uzbl is still specifically a single page browser. Exiting with non-zero when we get more should be a reasonable option for core. And I would suggest uzbl-browser should do the same to keep things simple for now and not have to grok the arguments for uzbl-core.

[keis]

Checked just now and uzbl-tabbed already works this way

[keis]

So does droppign -u and going with only the first argument as url and error if there is more sound like a good aproach for core?

[mathstuf]

I still think uzbl-core should have a flag and uzbl-browser act more like a browser there.

Keep -u and, if it isn't given, use the first argument and warn if adding argument parsing to uzbl-browser is onerous?

[keis]

Is there really any benefit to -u over a positional argument in core?

It's not very complex to add some getopt magic to uzbl-browser as it would not have to know about any specifics of the arguments except -u. But there still code in two placing fiddling with the opts which I think we should avoid if possible

[mathstuf]

I guess not. We should output that we're ignoring arguments to stderr though.