OK, I thought a bit more about your comments and I am trying to
outline a possible solution. Please tell me if the existence of
such a solution would make you happy - or at least happier
wrt CD/DVD writing on RISC OS ;-)

First of all: the way CD(VD)Burn works at the moment is very
"application-centric" and "authoring-centric". This will not
change. What I propose is an alternative UI.

I will name the solution CDVDFiler to avoid misunderstandings.

So you start up CDVDFiler usually inside your boot sequence.
CDFSFiler and CDROMFSFiler will be inactive for most users.
CDVDFiler will detect the drives available and will present a
filer icon on the left hand side for each of your drives,
giving them sensible names (instead of :0, :1 etc.) along
with an indication if they are read-only or if they can be
used as writable devices.

Clicking on one if those drive icons checks what kind of
medium is inside the drive.

If it is a writable medium,
the Pseudo filer known from CD(VD)Burn will open (importing
a previous session automatically if available) and you
will be able to drag additional files and directories to it,
showing a FilerAction-like interface during this operation.
All the various, but seldomly-used parameters known from CDVDBurn
are grouped together into a number of "disc-type" headings
accessible from the Pseudo filer's menu.

All the Pseudo filer windows somehow indicate that the data
that is shown is not yet written to the disc.

If you are happy with the layout, you use the big "Write It"
menu item to put it onto the CD/DVD.

If it is a non-writable medium,
either standard CDFS/CDROMFS is invoked and a standard filer window
is shown, or the new forthcoming CDVDRead Pseudo filer will be
invoked, showing you the content of your CD/DVD.

Essence: everything looks and behaves like a filer window.

Steffen

--
Steffen Huber
hubersn Software - http://www.hubersn-software.com/