auspex's open     I wouldn't think of it as a pitiful "file manager"--this is a good idea and better if you made a "user friendly" version that did not require getopt style arguments for "ordinary people" who are adverse to getopt-style command lines:

view x [with tool]
edit x [with tool]
compress x [with tool]
encrypt x [with tool]
decrypt x [with tool]
translate x to language

We already typically use MIME types to decide what program to "view" something with, why not also create mappings for edit, compress, and translate? I have heard of many users of computers who might have used some program every day for the last 3 years on their computer and didn't know what it was called. ("Do you use Word to edit your manuscripts?" "What's Word?" {{Clippy bangs on the CRT and mouths "I'm Word! Look at me! Help meeeee!!"}}) Too often icons on desktops represent file-types as application tools (e.g. there's a Winamp icon for a sound file, but no distinct WAV, MP3, or OGG icon) instead of file types. This idea has given me a small kick in the pants and I actually started prototyping in Bash-- but will switch back to Python because of better array support. More verbs than just those will be available and the issue of "x" where "x" is some filespec (hard to remember/type by users) will be looked at.