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jlfreund:
Hi, I am new to MAME and have looked at a few front ends but can't get them to work the way I want.  Can anyone tell me if there's a front end that can do the following:

- Allow 1 or more "categories" or "folders" of roms.  I'd like to be able to navigate between "classics", "smups", "fighting", etc

- Customize the list of roms to not include sub-parts.  For example, instead of "Gameblah1 - B" +  "Gameblah1a [US]" + "Gameblah2", I'd just like to have one menu item for "My Game Name".  BTW, what's all that about anyway?  Why aren't games distributed as single zip files?

brophog:
They are single zips if you have an unmerged set. However, you'd still need the parent rom in the same directory.

loadman:
Most of the FE's can do what you want.

You don't change the the rom arrangements/directories. Leave the roms where they are.

Instead you make custom game lists and name the games the way you want.

EG

http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/malagamelist.html

jlfreund:
So, can someone explain are there a set of standard inputs used by front ends for the menus?  I presume that the menu of emulators or categories is generated differently for each front end, but what about the list of games?

Does that come from mameinfo.dat?  Is there a standard XML format for a list of games?  Or does each front end need to process the ROM directory to build it's own custom list? 

Also --

- Is there a viewer for mameinfo.dat so you can browse all the information -- or can you only see certain fields in mame32 or other front ends?

- I still don't understand why some games are distributed as multiple zips?  Is there a reason why they can't be combined?  It seems ridiculous for every user in the world to have to customize their front end game list menu to hide unusable zip files.

- What are some good (free) front ends that support categories?

Havok:
The best place to get all your questions answered is the wiki:

Wiki Main

Wiki Front Ends

Me, I'm an AtomicFE user, and it will do all the things you are looking for. You can check it out here:

AtomicFE

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