RE: Idea on how to improve cygstart

["Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E]" <BBuchbinder at niaid dot nih dot gov>]

SJ Wright sent the following at Tuesday, April 19, 2011 7:31 PM
>Well, maybe there's a better word than "improve." Maybe "streamline"
>would be better. Anyhow, here it is.
>
>Allow users to create a list of paths to GUI apps they have on their
>systems -- other than the selected Windows defaults -- and using either
>aliases (like "monkey" for SeaMonkey 2.0 or "irfan" for IrfanView) or a
>syntax similar to how ImageMagick used to work (library:filetype) when
>converting files from one format to another, facilitate quick and easy
>opening of files in applications Cygwin users would _prefer to open them
>in, rather than the assigned default.
>
>Should this prove to be too radical a re-working of cygstart, then
>perhaps it's time to introduce another utility to perform the above
>tasks, and have it install with Cygwin and update with upgrades. Maybe
>call it "userstart" or "winstart" or something along those lines?
>
>Unless I miss my guess, this might put Cygwin ahead of complete and
>genuine Linux/Unix distributions such as Ubuntu, It's been my experience
>with the latter that instead of system defaults, one only has recourse
>on the command line to a spare list of GUI apps that open different
>file types, and not all of them are "out-of-the-box" Debian or GNOME
>installs, which puts one at a disadvantage (if only w/regard to the time
>involved in doing "apt-gets").

How about in ~/.bashrc

	function irfan() {
		cygstart /path/irfanview.exe "$(cygpath -w "$1")"
		}

Or in a file named /usr/local/bin/irfan that has been made executable

	#!/bin/dash
	for IrfanFile in "$@"
	do cygstart /path/irfanview.exe "$(cygpath -w "${IrfanFile}")"
	done

If you never give irfan a file or only files in the current directory,
you could also put an alias in ~/.bashrc

	alias irfan "cygstart /path/irfanview.exe"

Once one has the model, it shouldn't be difficult to replicate it for
any desired program.

Best wishes,

- Barry
  Disclaimer: Statements made herein are not made on behalf of NIAID.

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