Idea about generic command framework for launching common applications

[François Revol]

> Very interesting.   Thank you.  If I just wanted to open a text 
> editor 
> [this is just an example], so that I could type up a quick note, I 
> would 
> [I don't know what anyone else would do] open a text editor, type 
> stuff 
> (maybe print it if necessary), then probably click File, click Save, 
> decide where to save it, and what to name it. 

That wasn't my point. The point was to show that not all platforms use 
symlinks. :p

> If I were on a Windows PC on somebody's network somewhere, I could 
> with 
> confidence, click Start, Run, type notepad.exe and click the Ok 
> button.  

Except someone might prefer using UltraEdit and set it as default in 
the registry. Which would end up working a bit like on BeOS, just not 
as clean.

> A graphical text editor would open.  In Linux, with our many 
> different 
> distributions, our multiple desktop environments, and the enormous 
> variety of included and optional applications, I'm not able to get 
> that 
> program open so easily.  I won't even know immediately whether 
> firefox, 
> or gedit, or kwrite, or any particular graphic application is 
> installed.  By aliasing a generic command to an installed graphical 
> application, that problem goes away.  Add in the bonus benefit of 
> those 
> commands being configurable (system wide and also by individual 
> users) 
> you end up with something that is very simple and very useful in my 
> opinion.  Please chime in and let me know if you agree or not.  Thank 
> you.

I'm just not sure it's the best way to do it. But maybe it's the 
simplest one on Linux... just don't forget there are other OSes out 
there. Haiku will not support all fdo standards of course, but some 
other Unices might want to do things differently anyway. So I was just 
showing a different point of view into the discussion.

I suppose the $EDITOR thingy don't map well to the gui usage...

François.