Bug#490670: goplay: implement button "start this application"

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Ralf Gesellensetter]
> goPlay, goLearn and any other variation could become a central element
> of CDD's desktop if there was a simple button "start this application"
> implemented. Rather than browsing menus, the (novice) user would
> browse the goPlay/goLearn catalogue for relevant applications - and
> then start any installed application right from there.

I agree that this would make goplay a lot more useful, and am looking at
a way to implement it to include golearn in Debian Edu.

To avoid changing the GUI, I propose to make clicking on the screen shot
start the application.  With a tooltip when hovering over the screen
shot telling the user that clicking on it will start the program (for
installed packages) should tell users how to start the program.

To figure out how to start the application, I suggest checking the
installed package for any .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/.
If such desktop file is found, use its content/rules to start the
application.  If no such desktop file is found, goplay will not start
anything (most packages have such desktop file already).  I'm not quite
sure what to do if more than one .desktop file is found, but I suggest
starting the one with the name as the package if such file exist.

Is this an acceptable design for you?

Btw, is this application dead upstream?  No upload for two years and an
obvious patch to get rid of compiler warnings lingering in Ubuntu made
me worried.  Also, golearn only show two packages in Wheezy, while it
show ~20 packages in Squeeze.
-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen