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From: adonis1@nwnexus.WA.COM (Adonis Corporation )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Laziness
Message-ID: <505@nwnexus.WA.COM>
Date: 10 May 91 04:28:54 GMT
References: <1991May1.142136.19889@sinix.UUCP> <660@rosie.NeXT.COM> <SCOTT.91May6135522@erick.gac.edu>
Reply-To: adonis1@nwnexus.UUCP (Adonis Corporation (Doug Kent))
Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc.; Seattle, WA
Lines: 48

In article <SCOTT.91May6135522@erick.gac.edu> scott@erick.gac.edu (Scott Hess) writes:
>In article <660@rosie.NeXT.COM> jmynatt@ragnarok (Jim Mynatt) writes:
>   In article <1991May1.142136.19889@sinix.UUCP> dhg@sinix.UUCP (David Griffith)  
>   writes:
>   > I'm lazy. That's why I like the file browser in Workspace Manager. I
>   > hate typing "cd, ls, cd... etc". But here's the problem: you've
>   > browsed your way down a deep directory path and decided you want to
>   > do something unixy with the files you see. So you'd like to launch
>   > a terminal window at the current directory. But you can't! It's so
>   < rambling deleted >
>
>   What Terminal (or Stuart) needs to do is provide a service which expects
>   a 'thing' (document or directory) and then cd to the appropriate
>   directory before initing or becoming key (if already running).  Then
>   the file viewer menu would provide something like Services>Terminal>cd
>   to dir p (or something similar).
>
>   Of course a new app could be written that provides the service
>   then launches Terminal.

I've done this.  See below.

>
<stuff deleted>

>ability.  For instance, if you could copy the pathname of the
>current file from the Workspace, you could then move to (say)
>an Open Panel and paste the pathname in there, and it would then
>go to the path.  I'm sure it could be used in other places (say
>you get a reference to a documentation file - copy and paste
>it into Workspace to get there).

You can indeed copy the filename out of Browser using a service app.

<good stuff deleted>

The trouble is, once you've got the path out of the WorkSpace, you can't
do much with it.  You should be able to stick it in the pasteboard
enabling you to paste it into other apps (such as Terminal).  But for
some reason you can stick it into the pasteboard all night long and you'll
never be able to paste it back out into another app.  I think there
is a bug somewhere in NextStep.  Workspace is the only app which causes
the service to have this behaviour.  Other apps interact just fine with
this services.

Doug Kent
Independent NeXT Developer
adonis1@nwnexus.wa.com