An Idea Inspired By Tournament Hub (unified launcher)

[Kumaki]

I do not know if this is the right place to put this...but the whole Tournament Hub thing for Compo4All...gave me an interesting idea...

Since the Hub is able to launch games from anywhere you have them in the system (well, I think MAME's still have to be in specific location) - BUT...

The idea would be a luancher program (similar to PanDafe) - or perhaps PanDafe could be updated.

I suggest this because PanDafe  - while a good start...does not go as far as I'd like.

I, myself, have no programming skills to make this happen...but I'm wondering if a skilled developer would be up to the task.

My idea would be for a launcher that would allow you to add games to it that you wanted to launch - AND also launch specific emu's the way PanDafe currently does - and it actually lists the available games in that emu on PanDafe.

The reason I suggest this is because there is a LOT of good stufff on Pandora, and only a limited amount of desktop space, even when you shrink your icons down in size, you can only get 45 of them on the screen.

If PanDafe were expanded...or a new program made - that would do as PanDafe currently does...and would also iclude ALL popular emu's (but only if those emu's are installed on your Pandy) - so, for example, if I did not have PSXreARMed installed, then that choice would not even come up - currently, uninstalled emu's do still come up as choices.

It would also contain the ability to launch for all MAME emu's MAME4ALL, PanMAME, MAME-EX - but not Compo, since that has it's own Hub/Launcher.

Additionally, you could add games to it at your choice...by providing the program the path to that game.  so, for example, if I wanted to add, say, Road Fighter in there, I would be able to add it, by going to an ADD area, giving my entry a name - in this case, "Road Fighter" and then providing the program with the correct path to that program I wanted to launch.

Even better if it could launch things other than games, like business applications, etc.  and you could sort those added entries into categories.

I know what I'm suggesting seems expansive...but it might allow for a lot of people to download a lot more onto their Pandoras...because they would not have to worry about having so much good stuff on the Desktop - and would not have to go thru the Pandora Menu to launch other programs that were not on the Desktop.

Any possibility something like this could get done?

 

[Binky]

The minimum needed is a wizard for creating .desktop files from game roms, and a sleek tool that displays the contents of ~/desktop in a scrollable manner.

Also nice would be a window manager tweaked to show everything in borderless fullscreen

 

[Franko]

Interesting idea(s)...but wow, that won't be easy for anyone to code/adapt.  It's never quite as easy as anyone thinks.  Believe me - I've had many a dream/idea shot down by the obstacles of reality...    

...just as an aside, I have a "clean"/minimalistic desktop - I keep most of my .pnds in the pandora/menu directory...

 

Also nice would be a window manager tweaked to show everything in borderless fullscreen

This.  +1
 

 

[Kumaki]

I don't like having things in the pandora/menu section.  Because then you have to go thru hitting the Pandora Button, and going thru that menu, and finding the program you want.

Much nicer having things on the Desktop.

And the Launcher idea I proposed...if it could work....would work like this

First screen: Choice between MAME, Emu's, Business Applications, Games, and Other

If you choose MAME, it will list all emu's that are MAME, for example, MAME4ALL, PanMAME, MAME-EX, GnGeo, FBA, etc...

If you choose Emu's it will list all emu possibles: Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Playstation, etc.

Sub-menu uder Nintendo would include "Game Boy, GBA, GBC, NES, SNES"

Sub-menu under Atari might include "2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx, etc"

Any non-installed emu's would not even come up on the list..it would detect installed emu's - probably by looking in the appdata folder for the corresponding folder.

Once you got into the emu you wanted, it would list the ROMs, only the ones you have.  And you launch a game.

In Business Application, it could detect AbiWord, LibreOffice, etc.  And launch it when selected.

Games - would be all other games

Other - would be an open-ended category

And in the Games, Other, and Business Applications sections...you would have the ability to add whatever listing you liked...just by adding a name, and providing a path.

So it would be like a bit of a customized, expanded PanDafe.  It is even possible to start with what PanDafe currently is...and add to it, expand it's capabilities.

 

[Binky]

So the idea is to have similar menu categorisation to the current system with the exceptions that:

• You can choose to only see your 'favourite' pnds, thus greatly reducing the number of categories
• Emulators become categories, containing all compatible roms?

To which I would add:

• If a subcategory has no siblings, its contents are moved up one level in the menu tree

the ability to add whatever listing you liked...just by adding a name, and providing a path.

That's pretty much what .desktop files are. They contain an executable path, an icon, a description and a name.

KDE has a handy editor for them - I wonder if something similar could be ported?

 

[Kumaki]

That could work out...if we can see what a screenshot fo KDE in action looks like...this is merely the editor part of it where you can add things to be launched, yes?

In either case, it appears it CAN be done, as I suggest - the question is...can it also be done on a Pandora?

And, would anyone take this on?

I think it would be very very handy...and might encourage more people to download and try more things...if they can have it all somewhere handy where their Desktop does not get cluttered up...

 

[Binky]

Unfortunately, there's no chance of porting KDE to the pandora in a my usable way; its just too big and power hungry but (that's a big but)  pretty much all linux desktop menu systems work in the same way.

It might be worth trying to port lxmed if anyone's interested...

 

[freamon]

Also nice would be a window manager tweaked to show everything in borderless fullscreen

This is straightforward enough to do with Openbox. At the end of rc.xml, in the <applications> block, add

<application name="*">
    <decor>no</decor>
   <maximized>true</maximized>
</application>

 

[Kumaki]

Unfortunately, there's no chance of porting KDE to the pandora in a my usable way; its just too big and power hungry but (that's a big but)  pretty much all linux desktop menu systems work in the same way.

It might be worth trying to port lxmed if anyone's interested...

Well, if lxmed is anything like KDE, it could work.

The idea is to be able to put a bunch of less-often-used programs all under one icon on the desktop.

UPDATE: I had a look at lxmed - and this is basically exactly what I'm looking for!

What's the chances on getting a port, and do I need to put out a bounty on it?