How does ShellExecute() work?

[David Ronis]

OK I figured out part of my problem.  [In short, I have an windows
application that spawn netscape with some command-line url].  As was
suggested in this thread, I had to install a windows version of
netscape (I only had the linux native version installed).

The installation set up the registry and things work (well sort of,
netscape complains about not being able to write to the tmp directory
e: [which is /tmp]).

The problem now is that I seem to be on the slippery slope; i.e., most
of the plugins/helper applications are absent, so in order to see
various file types I have to download more windows versions of things
already on my system.  None of this would be necessary if there was
some way to get wine to first try a native program; e.g., before
trying netscape.exe or whatever was in the registry, try netscape
using a standard unix system call; only if this failed would wine
look for a windows version.  Alternately the order could be reversed
(I'd be more than willing to remove the windows versions of netscape).

The best solution, would be some sort of override capability be added
to the config file, for example, similar to the way native vs windows
.dll's are chosen.

David