Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!news From: carlos@roo (Carlos M. Salinas) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: GUI User Information (was Re: Another ... Suggestion for NeXT, Inc.) Message-ID: <1991Apr30.032854.11649@nntp-server.caltech.edu> Date: 30 Apr 91 03:28:54 GMT References: Sender: news@nntp-server.caltech.edu Reply-To: carlos@kanga.caltech.edu (NeXT mail) Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena Lines: 34 In article robertl@bucsf.bu.edu (Robert La Ferla) writes: > What NeXT needs to do is somehow display your identity visually. ie. a GUI > version of UNIX's "whoami" Window color? How about hide/quit by identity functions. > Related to this are other user information utilities like "finger", "who", > etc... I hope NeXT is working on something along these lines. I hope they > are not going to simply create a front-end interface for "finger", etc but > rather incorporate it into the Workspace Manager. I don't understand what you mean by incorporating into the window browser. I can see tieing it in through a services menu (implementation level). The finger could be a visual finger showing a map of your organization, who is using what machine (or is this too Big Brother?). A finger of each user should have pictures, sounds, text, whatever. Sounds like a database is necessary to do a good job. (3.0 DBKit?) And while we're at it how being able to drop files and so forth onto the users spec sheet or machine to transfer files to that person or machine? Program should also have the functionality to initiate talks and other things you usually do after confirming that someone is logged on. > I haven't thought about how this should be done so I won't offer any > suggestions. Dare I bring up the subject of processes in the > GUI? I'll save that topic for NeXT week... > > Robert La Ferla > Lotus Development Corporation > Advanced Technology Group / Improv BTW - Great job on Lotus. Especially the API (although it is procedure based). 'Los