IDEA: Start things according where/what they are

[tamer1]

Hi there!

My idea is to have one single icon on the desktop to open various stuff drag 'n dropped on it. Or maybe a context menu (I'll just refer to it as Starter from now on). This would help opening stuff easier without a memory resident program.

Of course you can use the Open context menu for this. But wait, there's more!
You could configure Starter to not open specific items with the default associated program, but some other way.
And you could configure to pause after a number of items. This might not be needed, but if you drag 'n drop too many items on a program, it doesn't open every one of them (at least Word gives you an error). Using the "Open" command in the context menu this error doesn't occur, but it opens the documents a bit slower. But don't stop reading yet, there's even more!
I understand it might be necessary for some tasks, so there should be an option to toggle if  Starter stops after every item or not. For example if you open a bunch of documents in Word, it'd load the first one and wait for you to close it before opening the second. And this is not everything! Well... Actually, it is.

I think the config file should look something like this (but, you know, I'm not really a programmer):
what you want to start; with the program ...;using the parameters ...;stopping after every item or not;pause for ... ms after every ...th item;
For example:
%programfiles%\Quake\%dir;%programfiles%\Quake\glquake.exe;-game %dir;1;0/0;
If you drag 'n drop a directory with the path: "%programfiles%\Quake\anydirectory" on Starter it runs "%programfiles%\Quake\glquake.exe -game anydirectory". So your favourite quake mod starts.

Of course it'd be necessary for Starter to handle environment variables (like %temp%, %programfiles% and others) and some new variables too (like %dir = any directory).

And what else should it do? Nothing. Nada. Nichts. It's just there to start things according the file path. At least I think so. And you could always start Autohotkey programs, scripts and whatnot with it.

I have this worked out even more, ignoring the fact that I couldn't program it myself. But the question is: is it possible to write such a thing with Autohotkey? And wouldn't it be too slow (compared to simply opening the files)?

If this is not a "Coding snack" but a 3 course meal (I'm "sure" I'm the first to write something like this  ) then sorry.

Anyway, keep up the great work.

[chedabob]

hmm, I might have a go at this. Im pretty sure it could be done fairly easy using commandline parameters.

[tamer1]

I'm happy to hear that someone else thinks it's not such a bad idea.
Another idea: a variable might be needed to describe complex paths easily (like %subdir = any directory and every subdirectory).
So, for example:
D:\DOSgames\%subdir\*.exe;%programfiles%\Dosbox\dosbox.exe
would start any exe with the Dosbox emulator if it's somewhere in the D:\DOSgames\ directory.

_{(By the way, which programing language is the best suited to write this kind of programs?)}

[Nod5]

tamer1,
If I understand what you want corretly, then it can be done easily in AutoHotKey or some similar script tool (it's free, see autohotkey.com ). For example, here's a script that AutoHotKey can make a compiled .exe file out of. When you drop a file on it, it checks if the file is from one of two folders and runs a set program based on that. To look for other folders and run other programs, just expand the basic formula for those cases (some programs need a special character before the path to the dragged and dropped file though. So you might need "run, C:\Program\UltraEdit-32\uedit32.exe /%1%" or -%1% or something like that in some cases. Hope this helps!

[Select]

SplitPath, 1,, xdirname
if xdirname = C:\program\xx
 run, notepad %1%
if xdirname = C:\program\xx2
 run, C:\Program\UltraEdit-32\uedit32.exe %1%
return