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Idea on how to improve cygstart


Hi.

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").

Steve W

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