Re: Windows: Documentation for bin\*.exe

[Reiner Steib]

Hi,

I didn't get any reply to the message quoted below.

Reiner.

On Mon, Aug 27 2007, Reiner Steib wrote:

> [Disclaimer: I don't have Windows here now to reproduce or lookup the
> details, so please correct me if my memory is failing.]
>
> In Windows' file manager (explorer.exe), you can right click on a file
> and select "Open With..." (re-translated from German, I'm not sure
> about the exact wording in English) to choose an application for
> opening this file (only this time or for the future for this
> extension).  When I want to select Emacs, I browse to the Emacs\bin
> directory and find 14 executables [1].  Okay, I can figure out that
> the most promising are emacs.exe, emacsclient.exe, emacsclientw.exe,
> and runemacs.exe.  runemacs.exe in contrast to emacs.exe doesn't open
> a cmd-shell window ("DOS box").  If I have already evaled
> `server-start', emacsclient and emacsclientw would be suitable, but
> which one?  So I did some trial and error and somehow found the right
> one.  But now Explorer remembered all Emacs executables and in its
> selection dialog box (after "Open with...") presents severals
> executables but they all have the very same description ("GNU Emacs
> for Windows NT/95/98/2000/ME/XP" or similar; FileDescription in
> nt/emacs.rc maybe?) and icon (the new Emacs icon).  I can't figure out
> which one is emacs.exe, emacsclient.exe or emacsclientw.exe.  Only
> trial and error?  (BTW, how to delete existing entries in "Open
> With..."?)
>
> I search for hints in the manual ("grep -nH -e
> 'runemacs\|emacsclient\|\.exe' msdo*.texi" doesn't give only two
> unrelated hits) and nt/, but I couldn't find anything related the
> documentation.
>
> Suggestions:
>
> (a) A README file explaining the purpose of the various *.exe files
>     (especially *emacs*.exe) in the bin directory.
>
> (b) The description appearing in the "Open with..." dialog should tell
>     about the purpose of the binary (or at least display name of the
>     executable).
>
> Bye, Reiner.
>
> [1] c:/Programme/GNU/Emacs/bin$ ls -1 *.exe
> addpm.exe
> cmdproxy.exe
> ctags.exe
> ddeclient.exe
> digest-doc.exe
> ebrowse.exe
> emacs.exe
> emacsclient.exe
> emacsclientw.exe
> etags.exe
> hexl.exe
> movemail.exe
> runemacs.exe
> sorted-doc.exe