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

From: Reuben Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2021 21:53:17 +0100

On Sat, 23 Oct 2021 at 16:45, Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> What I want is more or less the exact behavior of xdg-open, but I want
> to be able to check the actual command (e.g. "evince", not just
> "xdg-open") before pressing RET.
>

I don't understand why this is useful. If you want a particular command for
every file of a type, configure it; if you want a particular command this
time, specify it.

I also want to be able to override xdg-open with customizations inside
> Emacs.

This just adds complexity to the system.

Please bare with me as I'm trying to understand.

"bear" ;)

Is your preference still to just run "xdg-open", as you explained in
> your original bug report?

Yes.

Do you agree that if we could get my idea to work, you could have your
> cake and eat it too?

No, because I was hoping we could make the cake smaller.

  IOW, do you disagree with the approach because you
> think it is infeasible to make it work well, or because you don't think
> that the feature sounds useful?  Or do you merely disagree with using
> mailcap to implement it?
>

I agree with Eli that mailcap is not a good match; also it's widely
considered deprecated (for example, GNOME's mechanism doesn't use it), so
its configuration is likely to be out of date.

Mostly, I am afraid that a suggestion which satisfies everyone in terms of
functionality will simply pile on more features to Emacs, in an area which
is already too complicated. I don't see why launching external applications
can't be left to the operating environment, as all environments now have
mature systems for doing this. If someone such as you wants more complex
functionality, that can be served by a third-party package; it doesn't need
to be built in to Emacs.

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