KDE as explorer replacement (was RE: Windows windows in taskbar)

[Chris January]

> On Thursday 15 April 2004 15:31, Chris January wrote:
> > I'm thinking of making a patch for kicker that will display
> normal Windows
> > windows in the taskbar. I'm hoping this will allow
> kicker/konqueror to be
> > used as an explorer replacement.
> > Any comments or suggestions welcome.
>
> Nice to hear from your :-).
>
> Currently I'm very busy to fix some seg faults of the native qt
> port, so that
> I can make a first beta release with a running designer/assistant and
> linguist (still using cygwin for io, but native gui). Because of
> this I can't
> help currently you, but I like to share some of my experience.
>
> Beside the above mentioned topic, there are some more possible
> things to do:
>
> 1. include the explorer application links (Adding this
> application links to
> the kded deamon database)
As you know, I've just written a script to do this the other way round.
cygutil's readshortcut command can read information from shortcuts. I
believe it is just a matter of creating an appropriate .desktop entry in the
$KDEDIR/share/applnk directory (correct me if I'm wrong).

>
> 2. use the windows registry for retrieving file's extension and
> starting the
> related application from kicker (I have a basic working code for
> accessing
> the registry as qt application)
This is an interesting problem. Can a file extension be associated with more
than one application in KDE (I can't remember)?

> 3. Add the explorer panels like system and network panel. (For
> this I have
> done some basic research)
IMHO, the easiest way to do this is to add a link to "Network Connections"
in the K menu that launches the folder using standard Windows explorer.
Otherwise you will effectively have to write a Windows folder view widget
for Qt.

Chris