Re: Updating dired-guess-shell-alist-default

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Philip K." <philip@warpmail.net>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:05:28 +0200
> 
> > So you suggest to use xdg-open if it's available, and otherwise do
> > what? leave the current associations intact? or something else?
> 
> That's what I wanted to discuss, if I had a concrete suggestion I would
> have submitted a patch.
> 
> All in all, I think that xdg-open and similar commands are more
> practical than for example xpdf, xloadimage, etc. Systems with xpdf,
> xloadimage, etc. but without xdg-open are probably an extreme minority,
> but nobody can say for sure -- and changes shouldn't come at their
> expense.

Does xdg-open invoke different programs than what we have now in
dired-guess-shell-alist-default?  Is there a way to know what it
invokes for each file type?

I mean, you said our current database is "not modern", so that
probably means xdg-open invokes other programs, and I think it would
be good to know the differences, so we have something tangible to talk
about.

> I was thinking about improving the guessing system to support multiple
> programs and check their existence. Assuming the structure of
> dired-guess-shell-alist-default may be changed, it would seem like a
> good compromise.

Yes, possibly.  But before we discuss these details, I think it would
be good to define the outcome we are after.