"Start menu" (continued ...) - wine-devel

30 Sep 2003


      Hi all...
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.
The Linux client cannot be made unified yet, but I suppose I could at 
least write a client for KDE. It wouldn't be to messy to add other 
clients later for other desktop enviroments, since the deamon does not 
have to change in order to do so. That is, only the neccesairy thingies 
change.
From looking at the help files I suppose KPanelAppMenu could do the trick.
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...
Grtz,
Robert