wine users - Mar 2012 - link Explorer Shell extensions to Gnome thumbnailer

Programs with special uncommon file formats (not jpg) often register a shell
extension in Explorer that offers thumbnails for these files (since the files
otherwise wouldn't have previews).

When I trigger in a Wine application (eg. SketchUp) the File Open dialog, I can
see previews of the files (skp files) in the preview panel. This means the shell
extension does work in Wine. The Shell extension only is not of much use,
because outside of Wine it doesn't have an effect. Skp files have by default
no thumbnail on Linux.

Would it be possible to integrate such shell extensions in a way that they can
offer thumbnails system-wide (eg. register them as gnome-thumbnailer for the
specific file type, if there isn't yet a thumbnailer available for such
files)?

It's probably a feature request.

This has nothing to do with Gnome and nothing with Nautilus.

It's Wine's aim/responsibility to make Windows functionality accessible
on other platforms.

If proprietary applications provide a shell extension thumbnailer for their own
binary file format (not bmp, don't be ridiculous), then it's obviously
the better way to make the existing shell extension usable via a compatibility
layer instead of reverse-engineering every possible binary file format.

The OP finds it difficult to be understood and taken serious in this forum.
> The OP was asking about an extension thumbnailer for *Windows Explorer*,
> not a proprietary application.
Proprietary applications provide a "shell extension handler thumbnail
extractor" for Windows Explorer so that Windows Explorer (and also the
whole Windows Desktop) displays thumbnails for special binary file formats for
which a default Windows installation does not already show thumbnails.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc144118%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

So this question is not about using Windows Explorer instead of for example
Nautilus (or Dolphin etc.), but about having thumbnails in the desktop
environment for files for which there exists no Linux compatible thumbnailer
(because only the software manufacturer knows how to get these thumbnails and
they don't provide linux software).

On Linux, thumbnailers are usually handled on desktop environment level 
(gnome-thumbnailer, KDE ThumbCreator), not as an extension of the file manager.

Of course we could hack and reverse-engineer a custom thumbnailer for every
binary file format for every desktop environment.
But if the Windows application already gives us a shell extension handler
thumbnail extractor that knows how to extract the thumbnail from these file
formats, couldn't we better make use of that? Could we automatically use all
shell extension handler thumbnail extractors and use the extracted thumbnails
for a gnome-thumbnailer or KDE ThumbCreator?

Martin Gregorie wrote:
> This is nothing to do with Gnome
It has everything to do with Gnome that's the problem. If you search mailing
list history you will see people attempting to add one thing or the other so
Wine can directly talk to desktop environment. All of those attempts were shut
down.

If you want something like this - you'll have to create your own project and
convince your distro to include it as a "mod" for Wine. Wine does not
include any desktop environment specific "features". It have to be
standard and work across most/all desktop environments.

Optionally you can get Free desktop to cook up a standard for such a things.
Then you have a chance for it to be considered for Wine inclusion.

And as far as implementing this, I'm sure distros will be highly against it.
You talking about having a running copy of Wine every time use wants to browse
something. This will dramatically increase start times and memory usage.