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Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:48:40 -0800
Subject: Re: webbrowser.open("./documentation/help.html")-- No Go in Windows
From: Chris Rebert <clp2@rebertia.com>
To: llanitedave <llanitedave@veawb.coop>
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On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM, llanitedave <llanitedave@veawb.coop> wrot=
e:
> On Sunday, February 24, 2013 1:35:31 AM UTC-8, Chris Rebert wrote:
>> On Feb 24, 2013 1:21 AM, "llanitedave" <llani...@veawb.coop> wrote:
>> > I created an html help page for my Python 2.7.3 application and put it=
 in a documentation folder.  I used webbrowser.open() to fetch the page.
>> > On linux -- KDE specifically, the command opens the local file on my d=
efault browser with no issues.  However, on Windows 7, it opens Internet Ex=
plorer, which doesn't even search the local folder, but goes straight to th=
e web and does a Google search, returning nothing but useless noise.
>> > My default browser on Windows is Chrome, so my intention is getting un=
dermined right from the start.
>> > How do I get a local html file to open properly from Python in Windows=
?
>>
>> Sounds like this might be your problem:
>> http://bugs.python.org/issue8936
>>
>> The fix would seem to be ensuring that the URL you pass includes the sch=
eme (in your case, "file:").
>
> Holy Toledo!  That's a two-year-old bug spanning two versions of the lang=
uage!
>
> BTW, Chris, the snippet I showed in the title essentially WAS the exact c=
ode.

Sorry, my bad. This is why I dislike messages that put critical info
*only* in the subject line; I tend not to reread the subject line once
I've opened the message.

>  It's a method with that single line called from a wxPython Help menu.  I=
 can't really put an absolute pathname into the argument, because the appli=
cation is going to be distributed to a variety of computers at my workplace=
, and there's no assurance that it will go into (or remain in)a particular =
folder.

As Demian demonstrated, you can simply compute the absolute path from
the relative path at runtime; although I would probably toss an
abspath() call in for good measure
(http://docs.python.org/2/library/os.path.html#os.path.abspath ).

> This to me illustrates the downside of the Python philosophy of "There sh=
ould be only one obvious way to do things".  If that one obvious way has a =
fatal bug, you're pretty much SOL.

On the other hand, you don't have to investigate which of N APIs is
the "fixed"/"correct" one (Which PHP MySQL function is safe from SQL
injection again?), and you only have wait for 1 fix instead of N. But
yes, some of Python's included batteries are due for some recharging.

Cheers,
Chris