I have another proposal on how to improve the behaviour of this subsystem: * Open the camera lens: open the camera app * Open the camera lens WHILE PRESSING THE SHUTTER: do nothing * Let "camera-interested" apps register themselves somewhere in the OS (GConf?). Now when the sliders open, the camera app only starts up when none of these registered apps is running.
I think, shortcutd is the natural place for these kind of UI-event-triggered user configurable menus.