invoke-private-html-browser

Arguments: url-or-pathname &key box waiting-title

Displays a web page or file in the default web browser application. url-or-pathname should be either the URL string of a web page or the pathname or path namestring of a local file to display. The keyword arguments are no longer used, and are retained only for compatibility with existing application code.

If this function believes that it successfully displayed the requested page, then true is returned, and otherwise nil is returned. This function works by executing a command line that runs the default web browser application, passing the URL or file path to display. For apparently all popular web browsers, this will start the browser application if it is not already running, or else (at least by default) add a new tab to the browser if it is already running.

When CG is running on Windows, the function windows-command-for-document-type is called to find the path of the default web browser. When CG is running on GTK on a Mac, the command line simply runs "open". When CG is running on GTK on Linux, the command line will try to run "xdg-open", "gnome-open", and "firefox" in turn until if and when one of those succeeds; if none succeed, then the URL or file path will be posted to the system clipboard. You could then paste the URL into a web browser if there's one that you can run yourself.

The word "private" in this function name is an anachronism, and the function name has remained the same only for backward compatibility. The function formerly had used a "private" instance of a browser that's used only by the lisp application, rather than displaying in an already-running browser. Now that a single browser will create a new tab, what the user had been viewing in their browser will no longer get buried by multiple URLs or files that are displayed there by lisp.

See also private-html-browser-handle.

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This page was not revised from the 10.0 page.
Created 2019.8.20.