Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 55925
htmlview launches KDE application in non KDE desktop
Last modified: 2013-04-02 00:15:54 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.9-13 i686) Description of problem: htmlview launches an HTML viewer based on the desktop being used. There are 3 sets of choices: one set of HTML viewers for KDE, one set for GNOME and one set for a generic desktop (nor KDE, nor GNOME). At least this is what can be understood reading the script /usr/bin/htmlview. But the generic set is never given preference. The script tests only if the user is running GNOME, in which case the gnome viewers are given preference. Otherwise, the KDE viewers are given preference. If KDE is installed, khelpcenter will be the chosen HTML viewer. One complaint is that the KDE applications are slow to load into memory when not running the KDE desktop. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run a graphical desktop different of GNOME and KDE. In my case I am running the IceWM window manager. 2. Call htmlview to view an HTML page. Actual Results: Watch khelpcenter slowly load and then show you the HTML page (supposing KDE is installed in your system). Expected Results: A non KDE or non GNOME HTML viewer be used to display the HTML page. Additional info:
This is true, because the "generic" ones simply aren't faster to start up (mozilla is huge). In my experience, starting konqueror even without running KDE doesn't take longer. Is this different for you?
In fact, mozilla is not working when launched with htmlview when launched by my mail client of choice (mutt). It seems to not accept a file name without the file:// part as a URL, as is sent by mutt. So I have edited the htmlview script and reordered the options. I have found that galeon is a good option (although it is a GNOME application), even not running GNOME. It loads (and unloads) much faster than the KDE browsers in my configuration. khelpcenter is really started slower than galeon in my box (a Pentium II 400 MHz, 128 Mb computer). I am attaching a patch of the changes I have made to htmlview. Maybe you could consider testing explicitly the presence of KDE and add the KDE browsers (or galeon) to the generic options.
Created attachment 37008 [details] Make htmlview check if KDE is running
I also noticed the problem and made my patch. My approach with KDE detection is different. kdeinit may be running just because konqueror was previously run, but the desktop is not KDE (it's IceWM in my case). The real sign of the KDE desktop is "kdesktop". However, it is seen as "kdeinit: kdedesktop" in the process listing. I believe that it's wrong to run konqueror just because I have already konqueror ready or because I have run and closed it in that session. This would be very inconsistent. The right test for KDE is: if [ "x`/sbin/pidof kdeinit:\ kdesktop`" != "x" ]; then This has been tested with and without KDE.