[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#626400: chromium weirdness

[Jonathan Nieder]

Hi,

Aldo Maggi wrote:

> i'm sorry to bother you again,

Heh, recording for the log.  I hope that's okay.

> but i like chromium and use it as my
> main browser so i'd like some strange behaviours were modified:
>
> i've cloned my wheezy partition elsewhere and, again, i've removed
> epdfview
> acroread
> gv
> evince (yesterday i did not uninstall it!!!)
> (mozplugger is not installed)
>
> ICEWEASEL
> if i try to open the following page
> http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=20091015&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP&CC=WO&NR=2009125444A1&KC=A1
> it ask me for installing the proper plugin and after having looked for
> for a little while, it proposes acrobat mozilla plugin from adobe site;
>
> if i try to open the following page
> http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/gutenprint-developer-manual.pdf
> it downloads the document and automatically starts gimp (for importing
> the pdf and showing it)
>
> the different behaviour seems depending on the extension but anyway is
> a bit weird (why doesn't it ask for installing the proper plugin in the
> second case as well????)

Probably the espacenet one uses an <object> tag, while the gimp-print one
is just sending a file with the PDF content-type.  In the latter case it
assumes you might want to download the file or open it for editing,
unless you already have a pluging that wants to render it.

> CHROMIUM
> if i try to open the former page it shows the usual "plugin missing"
>
> if i try to open the latter page (or whatever file with pdf extension)
> it asks to dl the file and then, under request, opens it with gimp  

Yep.

> AT THIS STAGE I INSTALL MOZPLUGGER
> (neither dselect nor apt-get give any "suggestions"!!!!)

See <http://bugs.debian.org/466183>.  It looks like the changes from
1.10.1-2 have been lost rather than being deliberately backed out.

[...]
> in conclusion, i think mozplugger should depend from at least one of
> the programs it uses for each extensions it is supposed to handle, in
> fact maybe most of them are installed during the first distro install
> but it is possible they are removed thereafter (do you think i should
> file a bug against mozplugger?).

Yep, I think a request to add the suggests list back sounds like a
good idea.

As for Recommends: I don't think that would be as good, since people
on resource-constrained machines may use mozplugger without
necessarily wanting support for all file types.  Maybe there could be
a mozplugger-and-renderers virtual package and chromium could have

 Recommends: mozplugger-and-renderers | mozplugger

so the helpers could be installed by default when installing for the
first time while making it easy to declare "I don't want these" by
uninstalling a single package.

> and, anyway, as regards chromium, it should not suggest mozplugger
> alone (imho i would say "recommend") but also the programs needed by
> mozplugger itself. 
>
> thank you very much for your time!

Thanks for working to make Debian better. :)

> aldo
>
> p.s. there is an extension for windows google-chrome which opens a tab
> with i.e. (for cases when google-chrome doesn't know how to handle a
> badly (non-standard) written page, i think i'd be wise having in
> chromium a similar feature with iceweasel.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icoloanbecehinobmflpeglknkplbfbm
might be a starting point for someone interested in doing that.

I'd be happier if such a thing were a native feature (gecko tab) but
in any case it's all theoretical until someone spends the time to get
it working.