Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:26:12 -0500
From: Ken Brown <address@hidden>
Cc: Emacs <address@hidden>
Cygwin provides a linux-like environment for Windows, but it doesn't
provide its own web browser. So it's natural for a cygwin user to just
want to use the default Windows browser. And cygwin provides the
"cygstart" command precisely to make this sort of thing easy. Thus
cygstart /unix/style/path/to/file.html
will open file.html in the default Windows browser. Cygstart takes care
of converting the path to a form that Windows understands. Without my
patch, (browse-url-file-url file) returns a URL that doesn't get
correctly converted.
I think that the right fix would be in browse-url-file-url, so that it
does return a correctly converted URL. Using cygstart directly in
browse-url-of-file deviates too much from what other platforms do --
they all invoke the browser in browse-url. Such a deviation could
mean maintenance headaches in the future. For example, browse-url
takes care of setting the environment for the process being invoked,
while your patch short-circuits that for Cygwin.