Re: Okay Firefox, that's ... interesting. Now cut it out!

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From: jrodman
Subject: Re: Okay Firefox, that's ... interesting. Now cut it out!
Date: 22:18 on 25 Jan 2007
On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 03:30:23PM -0500, Sean Conner wrote:
>   Obviously I didn't remember the URL correctly, but that's not that much of
> a problem.  The system I'm currently using is Linux with X.  My computer at
> work is Linux that runs X.  Easy enough, just ssh to my workstation with X
> forwarding and run firefox.  Sure, it might be a bit sluggish, but I can get
> the URL I need.

That you have to open a gui instead of just grepping the obvious
datafile is kind of hateful.  (And you really do.  Where is the profile?
.mozilla .firefox? in something mumble/default/md5hash/idiocy/something/
Then the bookmarks.js or whatever is a tag-soup of incomprehensible junk..)

>   Sigh.  I'll close my local Firefox.
> 
>   Only *then* did I get the Firefox I wanted.
> 
>   I specifically use Linux *because* it has a history of not being user
> friendly and doing *exactly* what you tell it to.  This business of being
> *clever* is disconcerting.  I wish it would stop when I wanted it to stop.
> 
>   -spc (I suppose there's some command line option to get the behavior I
> 	want, but I certainly didn't see it when I ran "firefox -h")

It seems the switch you are looking for is -no-remote.  And yes, it
does not appear with you run firefox -h, because firefox -h gives you
the sitches supported by the program firefox.

What's this -no-remote then, you say?  Well THAT switch is implemented
by the wrapper script.  Pish tosh, a wrapper script is some silly linux
distribution script, you would think.  But look at the license and the
copyright and you'll find this is part of the standard firefox
distribution.  The method for getting the wrapper script appears to be
to open it in vi.  At least, that's the method I used.  My firefox
manpage does mention it too, but that's hardly an excuse.

Apparently you can also 'export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1' although I suspect
you'll be unhappy with the eventually memory load if you leave that in
your environment generally.

Why put obvious switches for program behavior into a wrapper script? I
have no idea.  I see vague hints that these are "mozilla" options, as
opposed to "firefox" options.   Whatever that means.

"remote" also fails my clarity test.  They are referring to the idea of
"a remote" as in a control widgety thing that controls the central
device.  But that is pretty ambiguous when dealing with a windowing
envonment whose probably sole advantage is that it is network
transparent.

And as for Linux being a 'do what I say without helping (hurting)' kind
of platform, I'd say it has a pretty good track record trending towards
helping (hurting).  It hasn't gotten quite so far at this as more
popular systems yet, but my recent survey has suggested no one is
immune.  Cf. OpenBSD's /etc/myname.  Whose name?  Wow that's friendly.

-josh

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