bug#18132: Time for a smarter dired-guess-shell-alist-default? (dired-x.el)

[Reuben Thomas]

On 30 July 2014 00:49, Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> wrote:

> These days, there are mature programs for launching an arbitrary file with
> an appropriate viewer: run-mailcap (which is mature to the point of
> obsolescence) and

run-mailcap is fully supported by shell-command and async-shell-command where
the list of available commands can be accessed using M-n in its minibuffer.

I can't see any mention of run-mailcap in the Emacs source; do you mean simply that it's possible to add it to the list of commands used?

 

> xdg-open on GNU systems; open on Mac OS X; start on MS Windows).

xdg-open is a single command that is too easy to add to the top of this list.

Did you mean "easy too"?

So, yes, both of these commands can be added.

My original point is that they're not currently used; instead there is a custom list that has to be configured separately by the user from either of these.

Hence, I suggest using these commands (and similarly "open" on Mac OS, and, as per Eli's suggestion, w32-shell-execute on Windows) instead of the current contents of dired-guess-shell-alist-default.

Since each of these commands tackles all file types, it would seem simplest to add a new function shell-execute, modelled on w32-shell-execute, and have dired-read-shell-command use that instead of dired-guess-shell-command, which could then become an option that shell-execute can be configured to use, for those who are used to it.

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