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

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 09:09:07 +0200

>> +   ((eq system-type 'windows-nt)
>> +    "open")
>
> If this is supposed to be a shell command that can be invoked via the
> likes of call-process and start-process, then this should be "start",
> not "open" (the latter doesn't exist as an executable command on
> Windows).

Ok, will replace with "start", since only strings are used for commands.

Usually context menus on file managers include two items:

  "Open" that opens immediately
  "Open With" with a list of commands

So "start" will be used for "Open With" if someone prefers this.
Then a new command 'dired-do-open' bound to the "Open" menu item
will hard-code 'w32-shell-execute' call with the "open" command.