Experiment: an RPM that shows uninstalled apps in main menu

[Denis Leroy]

This is an idea I've had about a year ago and gave some thought on and 
off since then, but Richard Hughes has mentioned a similar idea several 
times on this list as well.

The idea is to show the (large number of) applications available to 
Fedora users through yum, but instead of a linear list displayed in 
pirut for example, show them directly in the main menu: that way the 
available apps are already categorized in a familiar way, and you can 
see the application icons and short descriptions through the menu tooltip.

For kicks and giggles, I hacked up a proof-of-concept RPM here for F-8 :

http://www.poolshark.org/src/fedora-apps-0.1-1.fc8.i386.rpm

After installation, you'll have to restart the gnome-panel with a quick 
'killall gnome-panel'. The rpm is 5 MB, which is not bad for almost 1000 
apps (remember we're only talking about GUI apps here, i.e. apps that 
install a desktop file).

Screenshots:

http://www.poolshark.org/apps1.png

The RPM comes with a 'fedora-apps-update' binary that updates the 
symlinks based on the apps already installed (so that an installed 
application doesn't show up on the uninstalled list).

What command should this menu entries run ? i was hoping there would be 
a simple 'pirut --install foo' or 'pup --install foo' option, but 
apparently there isn't.

Comments ?

-denis