Re: launching executables through HTML files

George Phillips (phillips@cs.ubc.ca)
20 Jun 93 23:23 -0700


>I disagree, you can do this just as well with the methods I've pointed
>out using Content-type: and it doesn't require ugly hacks to the browser
>(since you already have to deal with handing different content-types off
>to the correct external program, adding another type should be clean,
>hacking file: isn't). **Plus** using content-type doesn't require that
>you encode the command as a URL (Ugh).
>
>Content-type: exec/x-local
>
>/usr/local/rn.html /news/comp/sources/misc

Well, arguably this is just as messy. But, believe it or not, I don't
care as long as it will do the job. I'm probably missing something
about the MIME structure of things, but don't you still need some
sort of URL to get the ball rolling (and keep it rolling)? Can you
actually say something like:

Other <A HREF=
Content-type: exec/x-local

/usr/local/rn.html /newsgrouplist
>newsgroups</A>

(Or some syntactically correct variant). Just to be clear, here's how I
see the file: hack equivalent:

Other <A HREF=file:/usr/local/rn.html%/newsgrouplist>newsgroups</A>

It would seem some kind of URL hack is necessary, no?