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. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple