Programming

Sometimes I wonder about how to do something that I think ought to be possible, and get dejected when I realize that I don't know the smallest thing about how to do it.

Take the Windows XP menu system. I don't agree with the layout that it's in when you first unwrap the product. It doesn't appear to be in any order or classification -- just a bunch of stuff thats tossed in there. No 'the Microsoft stuff in this menu, the Adobe in that'; no 'the writing tools here, the numerical ones there' -- nothing like that. So one of the things that I do is move them around until the order makes sense to me.

For example, on this laptop, I have about ten categories. One is 'Work related', and its whatever software I use to connect to my work network, or to do work once I am there. Another is 'Microsoft related', and that's pretty obvious. Another 'Writing tools', and a fourth is 'Startup'. There are about five that could be characterized as part of something else, or fall into another category, but I haven't gotten around to it -- things like Windows Defender, or Feed Demon, or Network Magic. Then there's Media Players and Displays, and Norton System Works (which is the only one I won't move -- I think it 'remembers' where its start member is, and gets snarky if you move it.) Almost everything else falls into Accessories -- Entertainment, email, Moneydance -- things like that. I see the things I want to see, quickly (the really important ones, of course, are 'pinned' to the Start Menu). The other stuff is available, no more than two clicks away.

It takes me about two hours to jigger all of that around. Part of it is moving things inside Windows' breakup into different userids (we only have two that we use, but Windows has made at least five; go figure). And part of it is removing the duplication -- I don't want pointers in multiple places; I want just one, and I want it in a common place. (Exactly why that bothers me, I'm not sure; I just know that it does.)

So it occurred to me that all of this could be done programmatically. After all, all that it involves is moving files around, which is basic DOS commands! What I'd want is something that could go into a virginal system, identify all of the entries for every single menu entry, eliminate the duplicates, categorize the remainders according to my scheme (which of course would vary by whomever was doing this), and rearrange them accordingly. How hard could this be?

Have I done it? Have I even tried to do the littlest bit of it? Umm.... You know, I really should spend time learning Python, so that I could do this. Really should....

Argh!