iB::Topic::A defacto "Netscape"

	Damn Small Linux :: Damn Small Linux Board The DSL Forums

» Welcome Guest
[ Log In :: Register ]

Damn Small Linux Board » Damn Small Linux » DSL Tips and Tricks » A defacto "Netscape"

		Mini-ITX Boards Sale, Fanless BareBones Mini-ITX, Bootable 1G DSL USBs, 533MHz Fanless PC <-- SALE $200 each!
		Get The Official Damn Small Linux Book. DSL Market , Great VPS hosting provided by Tektonic

Pages: (2) </ [1] 2 >/

[ Track this topic :: Email this topic :: Print this topic ]

Topic: A defacto "Netscape", Satisfying progs that use netscape

< Next Oldest | Next Newest >

WDef

Group: Members
Posts: 798
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Nov. 03 2006,12:42

Unfortunately there are still programs out there that want to open netscape to access help urls etc. If their settings can't be easily pointed at firefox (probably usually can), they can instead be satisfied by doing the following.

As root:

1. cd /usr/local/bin; cp firefox netscape

2. Open /usr/local/bin/netscape with an editor.

3. Change line 81 from progname=$0 to progname="/usr/local/bin/firefox" and save.

There's now a defacto "netscape" on the system which opens as firefox.

Old programs looking for netscape (try old scite.dsl menu help->SCiTE help) will (hopefully) now be
happy and open firefox instead.

Obvious solutions failed: Doing alias netscape=firefox works for launching "netscape" from the
current shell but scite.dsl launched from that shell didn't see the alias (perhaps there's a way
around that (?)). A symlink to the firefox launch script won't work properly because of the way that the firefox launch scripts probe their paths and environment. A wrapper for run-mozilla.sh with firefox-bin as an argument will launch firefox but we miss out on half of the probing.

^thehatsrule^ Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: Nov. 03 2006,14:40

Quote

Doing alias netscape=firefox works for launching "netscape" from the
current shell but scite.dsl launched from that shell didn't see the alias (perhaps there's a way
around that (?)).

The easiest way for that is to put it in one of the startup scripts that set those vars.. i.e. profile so that the parent login shell would have it set.

Guess for the others would need their scripts to be changed/updated.

Why don't you try a wrapper for the wrapper? :P
That's what I usually do.

WDef

Group: Members
Posts: 798
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Nov. 03 2006,16:25

I thought there should be a way round it - I'll try setting the alias in a parent shell - I have a vague suspicion it might not work though.

Re wrapper on wrapper - when we get to layered wrapper-of-wrappers the counterfeit netscape perhaps seems easier ... it's only changing one line.

WDef

Group: Members
Posts: 798
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: Nov. 03 2006,20:08

I remember now I tried this before - I set the alias in ~/.bashrc and it doesn't work for scite.dsl - the alias is there ok in user dsl's shells, but launching scite from a shell -> scite help ->error command netscape not found.

I think scite.dsl doesn't care what alias is set in the shell - I think its idea of where netscape is is set otherwise.