Hey folks
I was thinking of writing some substitutes/stubs for the windows .CPL files.
I migrated to using linux as a desktop fairly recently /used it for servers
for a while, though/. Adapting to the linux equivalents of the programs I
use, using wine for the rest etc.
Whilst "reinventing" the software base,I had an annoyingly familiar *close
encounter* with a program which /both windows and wine/ gives out a message
basically saying in short: "For this program to run, the decimal should
be '.' and the negative sign - '-'." That's cuz the locale /Bulgarian/ uses
the ',' as the default decimal /both win and wine/.
The solutions, of course, are the 3 obvious ones - copy intl.cpl from a
working windows, go "regedit" on the subject, open the regs with a text
editor. Both 3 are not very appealing (notably the first one; the 2nd and 3rd
are rather annoying /if you haven't tampered with the registry too much/, but
I consider the first one a real no-go.). So I decided to write something to
replace the functions of intl.cpl, and called it "winelocalesetup".
However, this got me thinking further - what if that program instead of
popping up that message, decided to execute,say, "control.exe intl.cpl", to
save me some of the trouble? And didn't issue any warning, but instead
crashed in midst of working with it if the decimal wasn't changed (which
would normally be the case. It's an accounting program, so, the decimal is
indeed important...)
Anywho, I was thinking of creating a bunch of CPLs which mimic their windows
counterparts in their names. However, the applet itself wouldn't do much - it
would basically contain a somewhat appropriate icon/description, and, when
started, launch the real executable, wine*something*.exe.
That "wine*something*.exe" will for now basically show a
message "Winesomething. Not implemented yet. If you see this message because
of a running program, it means that the program is trying to...". With time,
the .exe will be transformed into a useful substitute for the corresponding
windows function.
For example:
intl.cpl - contains an icon (preferably a picture of the Earth; was thinking
of going NASA on the subject), a description "Wine Locale Settings", and will
execute winelocalesetup.exe. Winelocalesetup.exe would show a message:
"Winelocalesetup. Not implemented yet. If you see this message, it means that
a program is trying to call INTL.CPL, probably in order for you to modify the
regional settings." That way, at least, it will be indicated to the user
what's going on.
The idea for having both the cpls and the exes is, well, the cpls have to be
called what they're called for compatibility reasons, and, once in place,
need not be modified; the actual tool is contained within the .exe, which can
be, well, a lot more flexible to develop than the CPL itself, and, can be
replaced at any moment. And, well, although compatible with windows, it
wouldn't be a pure repetition. (and no longer an empty control panel. Yay!)
BTW I have done quite some work on that winelocalesetup.exe, it reads the
appropriate values from the registry, doesn't resemble the original
intl.cpl's vision, and, well, is somewhat kinda useful (if only I could
figure out how to WRITE the damn values, the keys keep turning back to their
old values... oh well, guess I'll have to RTFM some more.)
So, any suggestions/comments/ideas?