Robert van Herk robert@robertvanherk.nl
As I understand, right now there are various "standards" on how to write menus for Linux, that are incompatible. That would mean that writing a "grand unified ;-)" start menu client as I discussed before is currently impossible.
What could be made already though, is a Wine deamon that talks to shell32.dll internally and input/outputs with pipes to some linux client, in order to serve the start menu items. This would link the Windows start menu to Linux, in a tidy way. So the idea is that the Windows program's output could be piped to some Linux client that actually creates the menu dynamically, so it stays in continuous synchronization with your Start menu directory.
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Would such a system be appreciated by the you people? Or do you think I should wait untill a better standarization is available? Or do you think creating a Windows deamon and a Linux client is too much overkill for such a feature?
Also, if this feature would be handy, does anyone have expirience with the KPanelAppMenu? I can't get the thingy to work yet...
Just a thought which may or may not be completely out of proportion: In which sense can Wine and native Desktop be easily synchronized? I see a number of problems such as who should synchronize to whom. Why make an arbitrary Unix desktop synchronize to a Wine start menu? Why not the other way around? Wine builds in all other areas on top of the existing Unix platform. Is it really useful to start to base the native Unix desktop on Wine? Or is this the first step in getting Wine as yet another Unix desktop into the picture?
Also the Wine start menu will usually contain mostly Windows or Winelib apps, I suppose. The Unix desktop would have to treat those entries accordingly, makeing proper distinction between them and native unix apps/scripts or whatever which of course shouldn't be a real problem.
Maybe this has been discussed already in depth and I missed it?
Rolf Kalbermatter