Experiment: an RPM that shows uninstalled apps in main menu

[Andrew Farris]

Zack Cerza wrote:
> Denis Leroy wrote:
>> Andrew Farris wrote:
>>> Denis Leroy wrote:
>>>> Bill Nottingham wrote:
>>>>> Interesting idea. You're setting yourself up for a lot of pain on the
>>>>> package maintenance side, I fear.
>>>>
>>>> Well that all depends on how much scripting I'm prepared to make :-)
>>>>
>>>> I used a number of scripts to extract the desktop and icon files out 
>>>> of the RPMs, parse the desktop files, etc... in theory it's 100% 
>>>> scriptable. Now, things would be considerably easier if this was 
>>>> integrated into packagedb: flag packages that have desktop entries, 
>>>> add information such as short description and icon. Then we could 
>>>> push the idea further and add things such as screenshots, for 
>>>> example. Then we'd have all the raw data necessary to create a real 
>>>> "fedora software installation assistant".
>>>>
>>>> There are some challenges to providing this through a regular 
>>>> package review though: may need collaboration with redhat-menus 
>>>> (integration into main menu) and/or desktop-utils owners (to update 
>>>> list of uninstalled apps after an RPM is installed manually).
>>>
>>> One issue right now is that all those applications show up as options 
>>> in the 'open with' menus of Gnome right now, even the not installed 
>>> apps.  If you try to open an image with gimp while the fedora-apps 
>>> rpm is installed the menu will show many image editors and viewers 
>>> you don't have installed.  That obviously needs to be prevented.
>>
>> Yes I noticed also. I think it's just a matter of filtering the Mime 
>> entries out of the desktop files...
> 
> Or instead causing the desktop file to do: "system-install-packages 
> $package && $binary $file" or similar. :)

A variety of tricks could be employed I'm sure, but at minimum the applications 
actually available to open the file (installed apps) need to be the most 
accessible; if the other apps were still listed that'd be fine as long as its 
clear they are not installed yet and are in a separate sorted list (i.e. 
installed at the top of the menu, not installed below).

-- 
Andrew Farris <lordmorgul at gmail.com> <ajfarris at gmail.com>
  gpg 0xC99B1DF3 fingerprint CDEC 6FAD BA27 40DF 707E A2E0 F0F6 E622 C99B 1DF3
No one now has, and no one will ever again get, the big picture. - Daniel Geer
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