Maximum of one argument can be passed to Chromium.

[steviator]

For no apparent reason there is a limit of one chromium argument. When trying to specify multiple arguments browservice arbitrarily and needlessly disallows specifying more than one argument, pointlessly deliberately limiting its usefulness.

I would expect that browservice would accept multiple arguments by some means like

browservice --chromium-args=proxy-server="http://localhost:8100" --chromium-args="force-device-scale-factor=0.79"
or
browservice --chromium-args=proxy-server="http://localhost:8100","force-device-scale-factor=0.79"

Instead, browservice simply refuses to start, returning an error....

ERROR: Option --chromium-args specified multiple times

[ttalvitie]

The help explains

  --chromium-args=NAME(=VAL),...        comma-separated extra arguments to be forwarded to Chromium
                                          [default empty]

Thus, multiple comma-separated Chromium arguments given in the same --chromium-args Browservice argument works. (Your first command specifying multiple --chromium-args arguments is not supported, as we can see from the error.) There is nothing "arbitrarily and needlessly disallowing specifying more than one argument"; specifying more than one argument is implemented.

Based on this, your second command seems correct. The only odd thing is the quotes; usually the shell should remove them (at least windows CMD and Bash seems to do that); to know what is happening there I would need to know more about your shell where you run the commands. But I don't think the quotes are needed at all, so I would just try
--chromium-args=proxy-server=http://localhost:8100,force-device-scale-factor=0.79; it seems to work for me at least.

[steviator]

Hmm, as you point out, I was self-sabotaging by using the cmd replacement shell Yori. It turns out that it doesn't behave identically to cmd in this case, I have renamed the file I was using to start browservice to ensure it is executed by cmd to ensure the usual behavior. Compounding my problems is that the --force-device-scale-factor chromium argument doesn't work in headless chromium for some reason. It seems from my "research" that it should work, or has worked in the past, but now does nothing. I'm not sure whether this has somehow been broken by browservice or upstream in chromium. Based on this: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/375587855 it seems like it's an upstream bug, and I may just need to impatiently wait for this commit to find its way into chromium and then into browservice. Thanks for your help. Trying to get my head around why it wasn't and still isn't working has been pretty frustrating. I'm pretty sure I tried it without the quotes at some stage and assumed the widely disseminated argument was just being ignored by browservice rather than by chromium.

…

On Wed, 15 Jan 2025 at 08:05, Topi Talvitie ***@***.***> wrote: The help explains --chromium-args=NAME(=VAL),... comma-separated extra arguments to be forwarded to Chromium [default empty] Thus, comma-separated Chromium arguments given in the same --chromium-args Browservice argument works. (Your first command specifying multiple --chromium-args arguments is not supported, as we can see from the error.) Based on this, your second command seems correct. The only odd thing is the quotes; usually the shell should remove them (at least windows CMD and Bash seems to do that); to know what is happening there I would need to know more about your shell where you run the commands. But I don't think the quotes are needed at all, so I would just try --chromium-args=proxy-server=http://localhost:8100 ,force-device-scale-factor=0.79; it seems to work for me at least. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#142 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADBIA6N3ZGEONWCOO3QYYD32KVNZFAVCNFSM6AAAAABTQP6FTCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDKOJQHA4TMMJYHE> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ttalvitie]

Browservice has set the device scale factor to 1.0 for quite a long time (maybe always?) in https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice/blob/master/src/browser_area.cpp#L117 (to avoid the host display affecting how Browservice works); hopefully this is not causing the issue (I would guess an option with "force" in its name would override this). If it is any help with the scaling issues, Browservice does support zooming, either with --initial-zoom command line argument or Ctrl+J/K/M.

[steviator]

While faffing about earlier I accidentally discovered a misfeature that actually allows me to change a lot of settings of chromium, if I run another copy of browservice after browservice is started, a chromium window pops up. If I make config changes in the settings of that chromium Window and then close both open copies of browservice, the config changes are applied to subsequent browservice instances.

This seems like it couldn't possibly be intended behavior, and I haven't experimented with it much, but it may be a secret cheat code that allows the installation of add-ons, as well as an obvious way to confuse and break browservice if not used carefully.

Forcing device scaling to 1.0 makes perfect sense if there's a separate zoom function. --initial-zoom sounds like exactly what I've been looking for all along. I just set zoom using the above secret cheat code, I presume that preference would be overridden by the --initial-zoom argument, which would be much more convenient. Thanks for the explanation - this should solve all my problems.

Thanks again for your valuable time, your help is very much appreciated.