qwfassoc

A Qt Widgets based GUI front-end for the wfassoc library.

qwfassoc exposes the same install / uninstall / file-association operations as the wfassoc-exec command line tool, but in a small tabbed dialog aimed at end users rather than scripts.

Layout

qwfassoc/
├── CMakeLists.txt             CMake build script
├── README.md                  This file
├── cmake/
│   ├── Findwfassoc.cmake      Verbatim copy of wfassoc's Find module
│   └── README.md              Provenance notes for the copy
├── i18n/
│   └── qwfassoc_zh_CN.ts      Empty placeholder translation file
└── src/
    ├── main.cpp               Entry point, CLI parsing, translator loading
    ├── main_window.h/.cpp     Main configuration dialog
    ├── main_window.ui         Qt Designer description of the dialog
    ├── manifest.h/.cpp        TOML manifest loader (toml11) and schema builder
    └── icon_utils.h/.cpp      wfassocpp::HICON -> QPixmap conversion helper

Requirements

CMake 3.20 or newer.
A C++17 compiler.
Qt 6 (6.3 or newer is recommended for qt6_add_translations). The Widgets and LinguistTools components are required: find_package(Qt6 COMPONENTS Widgets LinguistTools).
toml11. find_package(toml11) is used.
wfassoc. find_package(wfassoc) is used, which requires wfassoc_ROOT to point at an installed wfassoc tree (see cmake/Findwfassoc.cmake for the expected directory layout).

Building

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=C:\Qt\6.x.x\msvc2022_64 ^
    -Dwfassoc_ROOT=C:\path\to\wfassoc\install ^
    -Dtoml11_DIR=C:\path\to\toml11\share\toml11\cmake
cmake --build build --config Release

The resulting executable is build/Release/qwfassoc.exe (or a similar path depending on the generator).

Running

qwfassoc requires two command line arguments:

Short	Long	Meaning
`-c`	`--manifest`	Path to the application manifest TOML file (see `example/manifest/ppic.toml`).
`-f`	`--for`	Target scope: `user` or `system`.

Example:

qwfassoc -c C:\path\to\ppic.toml -f user

When -f user is used the "All Users" column of the file-association table is read-only (cells render greyed out and clicks are ignored). Use -f system (with appropriate administrator privileges) to make changes that affect all users.

Internationalization

The user-facing strings shipped in the source code and the .ui file are written in English. Every translatable string is wrapped in tr() (in code) or marked as a regular <string> (in the .ui file, which uic then wraps in QCoreApplication::translate).

The CMake build wires up the standard Qt translation pipeline via qt6_add_translations():

the listed .ts files under i18n/ are kept in sync with the source by lupdate,
lrelease compiles them into .qm files which are embedded under the :/i18n/ resource prefix,
installTranslators() in src/main.cpp loads the .qm file matching the current locale at startup.

The repository ships i18n/qwfassoc_zh_CN.ts as an empty placeholder. Translators are expected to fill it in (or add new language files and list them in CMakeLists.txt). No actual translation work is performed by the build on its own.

UI Overview

The dialog is a fixed 480x600 QDialog with two tabs.

Applications tab

Lets the user install or uninstall the program described by the manifest in the scope selected by --for. The currently-active action button is enabled based on whether the program is already registered; the other one is disabled.

File associations tab

Lists every extension declared in the manifest. Each row shows:

the dotted extension (.jpg) with a hybrid-view icon,
the display name of the handler currently registered for the current user,
the display name of the handler currently registered for all users.

Clicking a cell in the user or all-users column toggles the cell state between the program-provided handler (link) and no handler (unlink). The "+ " buttons above each column progressively select more: the first click only fills blank cells, the next click overrides any cell pointing at another handler.

Changes are buffered in memory and only written to the registry when OK or Apply is pressed. OK writes and closes the dialog; Apply writes and refreshes the table; Cancel discards the pending changes and closes the dialog. The Apply button is disabled when no changes are pending.

If the program is not installed in the active scope, the whole file associations tab is disabled.

Notes and Limitations

The "self" detection in the file-association table is based on comparing the display name returned by wfassoc with the display name this program would use. Two programs sharing the exact same display name could therefore be confused.
The dialog uses Qt::ItemIsSelectable (without Qt::ItemIsEnabled) to render disabled system-column cells in user mode; their text is still shown but they cannot be clicked.
All errors originating from wfassoc are surfaced through QMessageBox dialogs; fatal errors during startup cause the process to exit with a non-zero status code.

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