Re: Patch for remote files in dnd.el

[Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>]

David Kastrup wrote:
> I think we should generally have this transform the stuff properly,
> independent of platform.
>   
The problem is defining what "properly" means for remote file: urls. On 
Windows, the system calls handle remote files using UNC paths, generally 
via the smb protocol, but on GNU and Unix systems, there are a number of 
possible protocols (smb, nfs, afs, ftp...) which all require external 
utilities, and it is not clear which is the right choice. I imagine this 
is why Nautilus and Konqueror avoid using remote file: urls, and instead 
use protocol specific urls for remote files.

> Can't we just generally use the same mechanism as for `browse-url' for
> files dropped into Emacs?
>   
Browse URL just launches a WWW browser to deal with URLs (except for a 
few specific types like mailto: which are handled internally in Emacs). 
I don't think the user expects a file to be opened in their WWW browser 
when the drag it onto Emacs.