Re: inconsistent button behavior (was: Re: nnfolder doesn't like mime & no base64 extracting(?))

[Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>]

>>>>> "J" == John H Palmieri <John.H.Palmieri.2@nd.edu> writes:

J> I understand that the URL may be malformed, but should there really
J> be a difference in behavior depending on whether I have a web
J> browser running or not?

It's the way netscape works.  Gnus just passes the URL (which isn't)
to Netscape.  If netscape gets something that looks like a pathname on
the CLI, it uses it as a pathname.  But if you tell it with the
netscape-remote stuff, it assumes it's a HTTP url.

I guess a case could be made that Gnus should do some sanity checks on
URLs before sending them out, but if someone marks something as a URL
and it isn't, it's really their fault, not Gnus.  I'd suggest in cases
like this, simply email off explaining that http:// is only 7
characters and will improve interoperability with all software, and
then cut and paste the partial URL into netscape.

It's not that much work the few times it happens, and by emailing the
person, you'll cause it to happen less.  I don't think anyone _wants_
to cause problems by omitting http:// from URLs, they just don't
realize it makes things more difficult.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - By consent of the corrupted
IBM: It may be slow, but it's hard to use.