Re: Make call-process (and start-process?) filename handlers?

[Luc Teirlinck]

Richard Stallman wrote:

   That could be a good approach, since both options are useful.
   Unfortunately, shell-command already takes a prefix argument.

If I understand the problem correctly, that makes four possibilities:
output at point or in a separate buffer, local or remote.  That is not
a new situation: C-x C-s has a similar four way problem.  It would
seem consistent to solve the present problem in a way similar to the
way the C-x C-s problem was solved:

No argument: local, output treated as usual.

Prefix argument: local, output at point, just like now, except:

2 C-u's : remote, output as usual

3 C-u's: remote, output at point.

This would actually be less complicated than the C-x C-s situation,
because C-x C-s also treats an argument of 0 specially.

It also has the advantage over, say, treating C-u specially, of not
forcing anybody who only uses the local version to change their
current habits.

Sincerely,

Luc.