I am using QDesktopServices::openUrl to open a file on disk with the default application. Although it works extremely well and is really easy to use, the interface is quite limited and I would like more control over the created child process, like a handle to it, or maybe signals when the state of the launched app changes.

In Windows it would help to use ShelExecuteEx instead of ShellExecute in Qt\4.2.0-rc1\src\gui\util\qdesktopservices_win.cpp.

In particular I'd be interested in knowing when the application is closed.