MacOS X support in browse-url

[David Charlap]

I'm running Emacs 21.3.50 on MacOS X version 10.2.4.

By default, the (browse-url) function does not work on MacOS X.  It 
fails to find any browser on the search path (which makes sense, because 
there isn't any), and then fails to load w3 (unless you have it installed).

I wrote this small bit of LISP to get it to call the system's "open" 
command which, when given a URL, will launch the system-configured web 
browser:




(defun browse-url-default-macosx-browser (url &optional new-window)
  "Ask MacOS to load URL using the system-default web browser."

  (interactive (browse-url-interactive-arg "URL: "))
  (start-process "browser" nil "open" url)
)

(setq browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-default-macosx-browser)




Please review this function and include it in an appropriate way in the 
browse-url.el source file of the next Emacs release.

Thanks in advance.


-- David