launch Qt app on right-click

[jcr]

Hello,
I need to be able to right-click an image, accessed through the Finder on the Mac and Windows Explorer on windows, to launch an app that would process the image (qt is just perfect to do all that processing), that would add a check to the image to mean that the image was processed, and that would add to the menu (the one generated by the right-click) details about the processing.

Is Qt a good tool to do that?

Thank you

[wysota]

Qt itself won't help you here. You have to interact with the system settings to integrate your application with the file manager. The approach varies between platforms.

[stevey]

It will be platform specific, so you need to write wrappers for each system you're supporting it on.

Under Windows, you need to write what's known as a "Shell Extension". It's a separate library which is compiled as a COM compliant dll which is 'registered'. You could do it the painful way through C++ using ATL to simplify things, or the best way I've found is with a third party product called EZShellExtensions.NET from http://www.ssware.com/ezshell/ezshell.htm
This framework simplifies the process of creating the extension, but if you just want to write your own, then search for Context menu shell extensions

I think the EZShellExtensions.NET framework is really good, at the very least, it's worth getting the trial just to see the generic API they've produced as inspiration for you own.

I hope this helps.

Steve York