Re: Web-related IPC -- WAS: Re: Product Differentiation

At 04:45 PM 7/25/96 -0400, triangle man wrote:
>Is this because you told it what app to use as your newsreader,
>or because It Just Knows what apps can read news, and picks one...?
>How would you change it to be a different newsreader - how would you
>make it so that typing that line would launch your own newsreader?

It's a little bizarre right now. You could go into your registry and change
it by hand, or you could lauch the alternate newsreader and it should ask
you: "Do you want this newsreader to be your default newsreader?" I don't
think that anybody has yet released a UI that allows you to plug them in
globally.

>That's nice. Assuming that it works for others, too, like gopher, telnet,
>etc. 

Yes, My
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\gopher\shell\open\command is
the path to the executable to run when gopher: urls are encountered.

I'm not sure if this is documented or not, but that's how it works...

I've just changed my telnet program globally.

>Developers should be taking advantage of this to hyperlink across
>applications. Of course, this may scare Microsoft because it introduces
>the possiblity that someone might actually use a non-MS product (gasp!)

Since Microsoft is not dominant in the Internet sphere, they are glad to
"open things up". All it does is open up Netscape desktops to Microsoft
software.

>Ah, the catch. Does it "all" depend on this? Is it Internet Explorer which
>enables you to "C:\>start news:comp.text.sgml" ? Is it that IE/Plus comes with
>extra Internet-enabling software that provides this service, which you can
>then use with other apps as well..? Sounds like Microsoft to me! ;-)

Internet Explorer patches the OS. You can delete Internet Explorer and your
OS will stay patched. The next minor revision of Windows 95 will have this
stuff built in. Perhaps they have already slip-streamed it into currently
shipping versions.

 Paul Prescod

Received on Friday, 26 July 1996 12:44:54 UTC