Launching apps from Netscape

[James Klock]

Until recently (a few hours ago), we had a set of computers that were using
networked CD-ROM products for public-access reference purposes.  I've just
replaced these with Windows NT boxes that get the majority of these
services on-line.  There are, however, a few hold-outs: products that we
still run locally.  

I've heard it said that there are ways of setting things up so that
following a link from Netscape will in fact open a local application, which
is not a plug-in and does not use any Netscape functionality.  The most
obvious way would be to set up the Netscape Preferences to recognize a file
extension and open it in an appropriate application.  A FILE:// link to the
datafile you want to open would then launch the external app to view that
linked-to file.

The problem I have with this is that the linked-to file has to be
"downloaded" into memory by netscape-- a lengthy process when you're
talking about multimegabyte databases.  Is there a better way out there?

James