Environment: Win 95/98 VC6 SP4

This article assumes you are femiliar with the Registry . It uses some wrapper classes I wrote disscussing the Registry .(Look for CRegistry + CRegistryShell classes' documentation) CRegistry wraps registry functions
CRegistryShell implements some specific actions related to the shell (searching for certain keys etc.

This picture is a representation of the new file menu : The funny letters on top are Hebrew script (New Folder, New Link) (Since it turned out well , I hopefully believe that it works on diffenet languages with special characters ... I havent checked yet whether it works !!! Please tell mail me ... (I'm interested especially in Latin + Slavic languages . Thanks.

This class is usefull for those of you who write Explorer like application or want your application to have a generic ability of Creating new documents the way Explorer does. Using it is simple . instantiate , call Create() , if it return TRUE you can get a menu handle by calling GetMenu() what you do with that menu is your concern :
The companion application instatiates a CNewFileMenu object within the Frame , Then it gets the main menu and appends the CNewFileMenu menu-handle ( got from GetMenu()) to the File sub menu. Since the menu handle is under your responsibily you need to delete it yourself (here appended to main menu so the frame , deletes it) Commands of the menu start with ...(you define the starting value) therefore you need command handlers for these :
a good practice is ON_COMMAND_RANGE macro : I assume that 50 id handlers are quite sufficient on any machine.

Creating the menu in OnCreate handler , you see that I used a wait cursor , Unfortunately Create() takes a long time : You should consider calling Create from a secondary Thread that is created in CWinApp::InitInstance() and storing returned result (of Create) in a boolean value accessible from OnCreate() of CFrameWnd , there when main menu is already created call GetMenu() and insert the handle to ... wherever you want.

CWaitCursor wait;
if (menu.Create()) {
	HMENU hMenu = menu.GetMenu(WM_USER+1);
	CMenu *pMenu = GetMenu(); //getting the main menu
	if (pMenu)
		pMenu = pMenu->GetSubMenu(0);
	if (pMenu)
		pMenu->AppendMenu( MF_POPUP, (UINT)hMenu, _T("New"));
}

Creating a handler for that range (of 50 id's) in .cpp file

ON_COMMAND_RANGE( WM_USER+1, WM_USER+50, OnNewFileMenu)
ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI_RANGE(WM_USER+1, WM_USER+50, OnUpdateNewFileMenu )

In .h file

afx_msg void OnNewFileMenu( UINT uID);
afx_msg void OnUpdateNewFileMenu(CCmdUI *pCmdUI);

Most importent is to call methods : database entries always begin with 1 Therefore any returned command (which begins with WM_USER+1 needs to drop that value.
Invoke has 2 parameters : the first is command id : (id you got - first id in menu) the second is your reference direcrtory. (or current directory or any ...)

BOOL Invoke( int iCommand, LPCTSTR lpszDirectory = NULL ) {
	return CreateItem( iCommand, lpszDirectory );
}
BOOL CreateItem( int iCommand, LPCTSTR lpszDirectory = NULL );

For information on command uncomment the first 3 lines of "OnNewFileMenu" function:

void CMainFrame::OnNewFileMenu( UINT uID)
{
//	CString s;
//	s.Format("got id=%d",uID-WM_USER-1);
//	CMessage::msg(s);
	menu.Invoke(uID-WM_USER-1,"c:\\");
}
void CMainFrame::OnUpdateNewFileMenu(CCmdUI *pCmdUI) //just to enable
{
}

How it works?

The function Create() builds a database : it first enumerates all file extensions (for example : *.bmp , *jpeg) into a CStringArray and then delete those that don't contain a key named "ShellNew" in their branch . Most keys are now being deleted , and few are left:
this is done in members of CRegistryShell object:

EnumRecursive( strKey, &arrTmp) : enumerates all sub keys of branch.
DeletePathWhichNotIncludes(...) : deletes Registry paths that dont include some key ...

You see here the code of "AddCommand" it accepts 7 parameters :
1) iNewCommand = index in array
2) iCode = code of file craetion (if "Command" , "NullFile" ...)
3) lpszDescription = Caption to be presented in menu
4) lpszExtension = file extension (such as .bmp .cpp ...)
5) lpszData = additional data (in case of "Template" : template name , or shell command ("COMMND"))
6) pData = pointer to the data (only in case of "DATA")
7) cbData = length of data (" ...)

BOOL CNewFileMenu::AddCommand(int iNewCommand, int iCode , 
		LPCTSTR lpszDescription, LPCTSTR lpszExtension, LPCTSTR lpszData, 
		BYTE *pData , DWORD cbData)
{
	if ((iCode<=0) || (iCode>5)) //invalid code
		return FALSE;//checking to be sure

	CNewFileInformation *pInfo = new CNewFileInformation;
	if (!pInfo)  return FALSE;

	if (!pInfo->SetInfo( iNewCommand, lpszDescription, lpszExtension)) {
		delete pInfo;
		return FALSE;
	}

	//1=NULLFILE 2=FILENAME (template) 
	//3=COMMAND  4=DATA	 5=New Directory
	switch (iCode)
	{
	case 1:	pInfo->SetFileOfTypeNull();	break;
	case 2:	pInfo->SetFileOfTypeTemplate(lpszData);	break;
	case 3:	pInfo->SetFileOfTypeCommand(lpszData);	break;
	case 4:	pInfo->SetFileOfTypeData( pData, cbData);  break;
	case 5:	pInfo->SetFileOfTypeDirectory();	break;
	}

	m_NewFiles.Add(pInfo);
	return TRUE;
}

Notice
Documentation isn't complete for more , read source code and comments , There is some more ...
The code requires more multi-lingual testing , I mean need to be check if works well on veriety of languages , Please tell me if captions are OK and extraction of file templates (and template directory). This code was tested on Hebrew-English machines . (works ok)

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