Idea about generic command framework for launching common applications

[Darren Fulton]

daengbo at gmail.com wrote:
> I'm not trying to be snarky in my following comments: they're meant to 
> be constructive.
>
Thank you for your constructive comments. 
> First of all, the FD.o mailing list isn't only about "Linux," so specs 
> can't be written to it. Constantly referring to it confuses the issue.
>
Very sorry.  Shall I say "UNIX-like operating systems with modern 
graphical desktop environments" from now on?  Maybe "graphical desktop 
environments commonly deployed on UNIX-like operating systems?"  Frankly 
that seems unnecessary, but I'll write it however you prefer from now 
on.  Let me know.
> Secondly, the reason that you don't know what editor is installed in 
> "Linux" is because it's not an OS. You know that gedit will be 
> installed on Fedora and Ubuntu, because they use Gnome. You know that 
> kedit will be installed on Suse because it uses KDE. You don't know 
> anything about what's on a Debian install because nothing is default.
That is an incorrect statement. 

[dfulton at lt1 ~]$ uname -a
Linux lt1.MYDOMAIN-REMOVED 2.6.27.5-109.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Thu Nov 13 
21:01:50 EST 2008i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[dfulton at lt1 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)
[dfulton at lt1 ~]$ which gedit
/usr/bin/which: no gedit in 
(/usr/lib/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/home/dfulton/bin)

I'm running KDE from standard distribution provided packages with no 
funny business.
>
> You really need to switch to talk about desktop environments instead 
> of kernels and OSes to keep the conversation focused. FD.o is about 
> desktops -- it's in the name.
I guess.  Would that have been helpful?  "freedesktop.org is building a 
base platform for desktop software on Linux and UNIX." 
[http://www.freedesktop.org/]

Best implementation decisions for a given environment is an important 
topic of discussion and I hope to be able to assist in that, especially 
for the environments where I can provide useful insight.  At the moment 
I am trying to "get people to understand the concept, understand that it 
will not (hopefully) break anything, understand that it will not  force 
anyone to do anything differently, and build a consensus that this is 
something that will be useful..." as stated in the last email.

Thank you for your input.  Please continue to send questions, comments, 
and critiques.

--
Darren Fulton