Somtimes pidgin cannot set manual browser command correctly

[Alok]

Binary package hint: pidgin

It looks like there is no way to "save" my browser preferences. I changed my browser preferences to use icecat instead of konqueror but clicking on "Close" does not save my preferences.
I have attached a snapshot to illustrate my point.
Or is this button missing only in my installation ?

Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Feb 26 01:16:43 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/pidgin
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx ath_hal
Package: pidgin 1:2.2.1-1ubuntu4
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdline: pidgin
ProcCwd: /home/alok
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: pidgin
Uname: Linux laptop 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 21:45:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

Surprisingly, I do not have the "Browser" tab in the "Preferences" window at all in pidgin 1:2.2.1-1ubuntu4.1. Is it there by default or should I enable it somewhere else to get it?

[David Mills (d-mills)]

Hello, and thank you for your feedback.

This bug doesn't seem to concern pidgin, are you talking about preferred applications? Or could this be a 'gaim' bug?

David

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

It is indeed about pidgin. All online service related applications have a browser settings which specified the default browser for the application to use for opening links in the text. In still laymen terms, when you send a link to your friend on IM and when the friend clicks on the link, the link is opened in the browser as specified in the browser settings. If there is no option for browser settings then the application might use the default browser of the desktop environment (which is set using preferred applications). If there is a browser settings, then it is used as the preferred browser to open the links.

I will check Pidgin in Hardy and confirm (or fix released) this bug asap.

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

I checked the same in my Hardy alpha installation ( I haven't done the latest updates) which has pidgin 2.3.1 and it too doesn't show me a Browser tab. Instead I have a "configure browser" option in the "Network" preferences tab whose screenshot I am attaching with this comment.

[Alok (alok-watve)]

That is interesting.....

Is this happening because I am using KDE and (from the screen shot it looks like) you are using Gnome ?

I have a browser tab which is utterly useless as far as configuring of a custom browser is concerned. You said, you see this option in Network preferences but does it allow you to save you preference. The main problem here is I CANNOT save my preference. In fact I can NEVER use anything other than my KDE default browser in pidgin. May be the problem you are seeing is another GUI related problem but independent of the one I am talking about.

I want to know how can make pidgin remember the browser we enter in the custom browser text box. If pidgin lets you save your browser preferences in Gnome then this is a KDE specific bug

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

There is no "Save" button in any of the preferences. It is automatically saved when you change something and close the preferences dialog window. May be you need to quit and run your pidgin again for the changes to take effect.

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

I tested the same in my Kubuntu 7.10 installation by installing pidgin and setting Firefox as the browser in the "Browser" preferences. As Alok guessed, I found the Browser tab in Preferences in Kubuntu-Pidgin. Hence this option comes in KDE installation only. But, when I changed the browser from Konqueror to Firefox and closed the Preferences window (there is no save button) and then tried to open a link typed in IM chat window, it correctly opened it in Firefox browser.

Hence, I couldn't reproduce the bug specified by the original reporter and the said bug seems to not exist. I therefore close this bug. Let the original reporter or others feel free to open it if it can be reproduced in their installations.

[Alok (alok-watve)]

I can reproduce the bug every single time. I tried to close pidgin and restart as suggested by Parthan. But no success.

Parthan,
Do you use system with only KDE or the one with both KDE and Gnome ? One possibility is that the config file where this is stored is created under ~/.gnome/ directory (and I do not have it). Can anyone please tell me which configuration file is used to store these preferences. I believe it must be some local file stored in either ~/.kde/apps or ~/.pidgin/

I assumed that the file name should be something like pidgin.config so did "find ~ -name "*pidgin*" but no success :(

[Alok (alok-watve)]

I am changing status because I am able to reproduce it every time. PLease let me know if anyone needs my configuration details to reproduce this at their end.

[Alok (alok-watve)]

I think I am understanding why this is happening with me. On ubuntuforums, I found that Pidgin uses ~/.gaim/ as the directory to store all the configuration files. But I do not have this directory. I just created the directory in the hope that pidgin will automatically create rest of the files but unfortunately pidgin didn't create any.

[Alok (alok-watve)]

Correction :

Pidgin uses ~/.purple/ to save all the preferences. I have the directory and all the related xml configs. I also found that pidgin DOES make some change in prefs.xml every time I change the browser preference. But for some reason this change does not achieve what it is supposed to....

As this is more about correctly changing the preferences rather than saving the preferences, I changed name of the bug to reflect this.

Here are excerpts from prefs.xml corresponding to each browser option:
When Browser is set to "GNOME_Default"

  <pref name='browsers'>
   <pref name='place' type='int' value='0'/>
   <pref name='command' type='path' value=''/>
   <pref name='browser' type='string' value='gnome-open'/>
  </pref>

When Browser is set to konqueror:

  <pref name='browsers'>
   <pref name='place' type='int' value='0'/>
   <pref name='command' type='path' value=''/>
   <pref name='browser' type='string' value='kfmclient'/>
  </pref>

When Browser is set to Manual (Command : /usr/local/bin/icecat %s)

  <pref name='browsers'>
   <pref name='place' type='int' value='0'/>
   <pref name='command' type='path' value=''/>
   <pref name='browser' type='string' value='custom'/>
                </pref>

Note: Preference name command has no value.

Thanks,
Alok

[Alok (alok-watve)]

I think this was some configuration issue in my computer. I deleted the xms entry corresponding to browser settings and reset everything and now things look fine
In fact my browser tag has all correct values and everything is working fine.........

  <pref name='browsers'>
   <pref name='place' type='int' value='0'/>
   <pref name='command' type='path' value='/usr/local/bin/icecat %s'/>
   <pref name='browser' type='string' value='custom'/>
  </pref>

 Thanks everyone for their help. I still dont understand how did this this xml file get screwed up without anyone explicitly touching it