MenuOrder registry values.

I have been writing an application that creates a menu tree in the start menu. I want to sort the items in this menu in my own specific order. Dredging the web I have come across a lot of info. about registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MenuOrder\StartMenu\. There's a binary key there for my menu entry called "Order" whose value contains loads of info about the names of and in which order the files in the menu are to be displayed in the start menu. My plan is to write to this key for my menu so I can order the items in it in the non-alphabetic way I want.
I've managed to roughly work out about 80% of the structure but am now well stuck.
Does anybody know how to construct this key value or whether there's an API or documentation somewhere that will help me do it.


P.S. the application collects ALL the recent files folder shortcuts and creates Start Menu base menus sorted by date, file type, file extension and alphabetically. It's because I'm always forgetting where/when I put files I've worked on in the past. Currently I precede each menu entry by a load of "."s so they sort in a Quasi-alphabetic way in the order I need them. Squirting the order into the registry could be a much less naff solution for me.