I am attempting to do something nutty that I will explain in a second...
We need all the links from a link list appended to the bottom of the quick launch and a bunch of global links appended to the top of the quick launch. The global links are universal to a bunch of sites, however the bottom links are not. So we decided to add the global links to the top master page and the site specific links from the link list to a nested child master page. The global links can change if the applications are changed, so we wanted a central place that is easy to change in one fell swoop. That is why they site in a global parent page, because it makes everything so much easier.
The second master page, the child master page, is local to each site (our office sites--we have 95), so the users of that office can add or remove links from that list really easily. I figured out that we could drop an XSLT dataview in SharePoint Designer that will automatically add all the links and open them in a new window. All you need to do is go to SharePoint Designer and go into the datasource view and drop that list item underneath the quick launch bar. If you right click on this dataview and select
Layout, then you should be able to play around with the different types of layouts. If you want a drop down you can manipulate that version or you can use the single property display and it will show just a link. If you want to make it look like the quick launch, then you need to play with the styles. Right now I am at this part. If anyone knows an easy way to add the styles to these links I am all ears. I was amazed at the relative ease when I was creating this solution. We really have no set deadline, so I am way ahead of schedule:) That is good since I hear we have about 28 SharePoint Projects and only two SharePoint Devs here.