(yakko: URL handler tweaks) Re: Perl/Tk Chatterbox Client

[yakko]

(Update(1): added handling for "+", and Mandrake info)

After a week in the cooker and a couple of revisions, I think I've got a fix for URL passing... at least for me, when I click on a URL, it may not make it to netscape (shell munged it), or netscape won't like it (has commas in it)... so, here's the stuff:

Near the top, right after the comments, you have the usual use stuff. Insert:

use URI::Escape; # escape funky chars out of URLs

I inserted this around line 90, after use PerlMonksChat;

Next, you'll want to go down to the LaunchBrowser sub, where you have at about line 773:

...
    else                            { $url = $perlmonksURL      . $nod
+e; }
    if ($^O =~ /MSWin32/i) {
...

In between these two lines, I've inserted the magic code to take care of all my weird URL woes[1]:

    # escape URL to keep netscape and/or the shell from choking
    # " " is also unsafe (causes "Doc contains no data"
    $url=~s/+/%2B/g; # real "+" is preserved
    $url=~s/\s/+/g; # get rid of whitespace, not just " "
    $url=uri_escape($url,"\',");

Now, for Unix folks, there's now a duplicate line in the eval block that handled whitespace:

...
    eval '
        my($pid) = fork;
            $url =~ s/\s/+/g;
        if ($pid == 0) {
...

Get rid of the $url =~ ... line (line 791 in my original), and you'll be set.

Tested for a week on Unix; some testing by dystrophy on win32. It's taken every URL that folks in the CB and I myself have thrown at it. Let me know if something goes weird.

[1] Alternatively, you may want to toy with the following instead of s///, but I haven't tested this:

    $url=uri_escape($url," \',+");

Also, for you Mandrake users, the "netscape" wrapper really mangles URLs with "-" in them. If you find this happening to you, and you haven't got it fixed, I have some diffs for the shell script that have helped me. Just /msg me to let me know you're interested.

--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.