xfce4-panel patch: Installing applications from webpages

[Thomas Leonard]

Hi all,

Following on from yesterday's patch to allow dragging links from a web
browser to the XFCE panel, this patch (which includes the previous
one) allows you to install software the same way:

1. Open the launcher properties dialog box.

2. Drag a link from a web browser to the dialog.

[ Information about the software is downloaded from the net ]

3. If you don't yet know the author of the software, you'll be
prompted to confirm that you trust their GPG key as a provider of
software.

4. You will be shown the 'best' versions of the program and any
libraries it requires. You can select different versions if you want,
but normally just click Download here.

[ The software is downloaded (and stored in your ~/.cache directory) ]

If successful, a new launcher for this program appears on the panel menu.

My interest in this is that a lots of ROX software is available this
way, so this provides an easy way to run ROX applications from XFCE!
See this blog post for a screenshot:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/node/269

It can also be used to get non-ROX software (e.g.,
http://lgames.sourceforge.net/index.php?project=LBreakout).

If people are interested in this, there are a couple of other features
that can easily be added:

- Fill in the Description field automatically from the downloaded information.

- Download the icon automatically.

Both these features would require an XML parser in the panel, though.

The patch is only 11K, but the bulk of the work is done by a separate
Python script, which can be downloaded from
http://0install.net/injector.html.

Comments?


--
Dr Thomas Leonard		http://rox.sourceforge.net
GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6  8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1
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