Consider this context:  under [Windows], [start] can generally be trusted to 
attempt some useful "launch the application/document/item/...", very much as
command-line open does under [Mac OS X].

At a policy level, one also often hears, "Well, there are good standards for
installing an application under Windows (or Mac OS X), but [Unix] (or [Linux])
is 'all over the map'.  Unix needs a framework so we don't have to develop a
separater installer/... for each flavor."

The Portland project
[http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/Project]
aims to fulfill that need.

At least, it does, very broadly.  While several bright people [[provide references]]
are enthusiastic about Portland, [CL] regards its ambitions as severely limited.
Even when the first couple of releases of Portland are complete, it will leave
many, MANY questions of interoperability unanswered.  2007 might end with Portland
only creeping past its x86-Linux [GNOME]-[KDE] base.

On another hand, Portland has good people working on it, it seems to be meeting
its modest deadlines, and it ''does'' help with several specific technical issues.
For example, '''xdg-open''' 
[http://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.0beta1/xdg-open.html]
is close to the '''start''' mentioned previously.


[[Mention that, while the command-line interfaces are likely to continue to be of most interest
to the [Tcl] crowd, [C] bindings will eventually appear.]]

----
[[Provide magazine references.]]

----
[[[Category Desktop]|[Category Porting]]]