Re: MIME handling for common MS Windows attachments?

["John Cooper" <John.Cooper@citrix.com>]

Robert Pluim <rpluim@nortelnetworks.com> writes:

 > >>>>> "Hrvoje" == Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:
 > 
 >     Hrvoje> Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:
 >     >> "JC" == John Cooper <John.Cooper@citrix.com> writes:
 >     >>
 >     JC> By default pGnus doesn't seem to offer to attempt external
 >     JC> display of common Microsoft attachments, e.g., MS Word (MIME
 >     JC> type application/msword), excel, powerpoint, etc.
 >     >>
 >     >> That would more or less be because that is the way RMS wants it
 >     >> to be.  Supporting non-free software out of the box goes
 >     >> against the philosophy of the FSF.
 > 
 >     Hrvoje> I still think relieving users by defaulting ms-word to MS
 >     Hrvoje> Word viewers, etc., might be useful, even if strictly
 >     Hrvoje> against FSF's philosophy.
 > 
 > How about defaulting to running "start" on Mickeysoft platforms, which will
 > generally Do The Right Thing, and will allow users to change things
 > without having to mess with mailcap files ? (but have mailcap be
 > preferred, obviously).

I'm currently able to send application/msword attachments to Word; however, I
also get a lot of Word attachments from Outlook users with a MIME type
application/octet-stream, which I now manually save to disk and then invoke
`cmd /c start' on them from a zsh shell window.

How easy would it be to add a new "MIME part" menu option "Save and start...",
which calls "start" (or "cmd /c start") on the saved file?  This would make
launching attachments in NT Emacs much more convenient.

    --- John