Shameless self plug, but here is my look at doing this and whether it is workable.
http://verbalshadow.wordpress.com/2008/ ... ows-shell/

Anyone else have any opinions.

verbalshadow wrote:Anyone else have any opinions.

Not an opinion, but just so you know: the quick-access plasmoid refuses to work on 4.1.81 on Linux as well...it's in other words not likely to be a bug introduced by the porting to windows.

none of your bugs are intentional simply we haven't fully ported everything, so for example the new device notifier uses solid, and probably the functions it needs aren't yet ported or working

the kickoff menu can be easily fixed to add a windows section with windows programs, there is a also a windows applet in playground that shows the native windows menu, but it has several issues since I couldn't find any api functions to do that

Brandon wrote:none of your bugs are intentional simply we haven't fully ported everything, so for example the new device notifier uses solid, and probably the functions it needs aren't yet ported or working

the kickoff menu can be easily fixed to add a windows section with windows programs, there is a also a windows applet in playground that shows the native windows menu, but it has several issues since I couldn't find any api functions to do that

Brandon,

Thank you for taking your time to reply. Not intentional is what I had hoped for.
In both kickoff and the native applet I suggest look at how other windows shells handle it. They have been doing it since the mid-nineties. Shells like LiteStep, Emerge, GeoShell & SharpE. Most if not all of are FOSS so code can most likely just be re-used. Like for LiteStep checkout the Popup or XPopup Modules I'm not sure what the latest versions are because I been out of the scene for a while. The Same is true of the LS systray module which handles a system tray for windows. I'm sure this is a treasure trove of helpful code. You also in to be careful of 64 bit in windows a 32bit app can run but can't access the 64bit functionality without jumping some hoops IRC .

Again Thank you for your time and effort.

Josh

One other thing about dealing with Windows Menu. All of the shortcut files are binary .lnk files, while all over KDE .desktop files are used to "define" each application. So, i guess we'll have to generate those .desktop files for each menu entry, and we'll need some mean to refresh them - if the menu is quite large it'd take some time to regenerate it. Although, i'm not really sure of what are those .desktop files and how to use them, but it's clear that they mean a lot since they define a) the execution command b) the icon c) the name and it's proper translation d) some other stuff which is yet beyond my understanding :P
Though, it's nice that Brandon works on it - it means it's not impossible at all
Thank you, Brandon!

This topic has been discussed earlier on at a different section of the forums, I think.

Anyway, it would be sweet if there's a .desktop generator to convert the .lnk files, it'll make it easier for people who want to have their favorite windows application on the plasma enviroment.

And yeah, with the API functions. Emerge desktop manages to use it's own code called the MinGW win32api to use many of the functions without using Microsoft's proprietary methods.

Now that Microsoft released most of the details about their API functions at their MSDN section, I am sure that most of the KDE Windows developers are figuring out how it works and make a KWin32api.