> I prefer program agnostic frontends. I don't use Kodi because it's not truly generic. > It's tailored towards media files and streams, and it isn't really intended for video > games. > > What's wrong with a frontend where you create your own lists, and each item in the > list is something like: > > 1) binary location > > 2) args > > 3) label > > Is that so difficult? That's all you need. Anything you can do with MAME you can do > with command line args anyway, so you immediately support anything MAME's ever going > to do once you support arbitrary args in a generic launcher.
because it needs to be more than a frontend.
the idea that MAME is a 'launch once' thing is an outdated concept.
if you're running a computer / console inside in for example you need a good interface for managing the tapes / disks, inserting new ones, creating blank ones, rewinding, fast forwarding etc.
designing a fancy frontend 'launcher' or anything similar to what you describe has limited use as we actually need users to be able to pull things up *while the emulation is running* so creating reusable menus etc. and a good interface is important.
I'm not saying what you describe is useless, there are situations where it would be useful, but it doesn't negate the need for the internal frontend / interface etc. having decent functionality, because regardless of how MAME is launched there are use cases where you'll need it, even if it's just something 'simple' like inserting the correct game disks when requested; you can't really exit MAME, and reload MAME with a different launch parameter every time you want to do that ;-)