Re: A few issues with thumbs.el

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Some files even run programs upon load (typically
>> things like "ispell --version"), and while it's often sub-optimal, it's
>> still OK as long as the program itself won't change any state either.

> Yeah. In fact I want to do that to detect whether the convert.exe in
> the path is the ImageMagick's or Windows' one (alternatively, I'm
> thinking of temporarily removing %windir%/* directories from exec-path
> before trying to find convert.exe).

I'm not sure what the convert.exe that comes with Windows does, but I assume
it's of no use to thumbs.el.  In such a case running the program might not
be that useful since all it will allow us to do is to tell the user that his
"convert" isn't the one we need.  We could do that just as well when we
actually really have to run it (as part of a generic error-handling or
sanity-checking code that ensures that convert.exe indeed produced the file
we wanted).

OTOH giving preference to a convert.exe which is not in %windir%/* might
indeed help make the code run in more circumstances, so it's probably a good
idea (although it may still want to use a convert.exe found in %windir%/* if
it couldn't find any other).


        Stefan