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From: jack@mcvax.cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Better Windows?
Message-ID: <7388@boring.mcvax.cwi.nl>
Date: Sun, 17-May-87 10:23:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: boring.7388
Posted: Sun May 17 10:23:49 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 17-May-87 20:02:05 EDT
References: <8705150714.AA25318@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: jack@boring.UUCP (Jack Jansen)
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 26

The idea of selecting multiple files, and then double-clicking
the application to act on them is something I've been thinking
about quite a bit the last time.

I think the idea can be generalised even further.

If you view every icon as an object that can be activated, there
are only two primitives that you need to do almost everything:

- Activating an object (double clicking). This works like it currently
  does: when you activate a disk/folder, it opens, when you activate
  a program, it starts running, etc.
- Feeding an object (dragging one or more other objects onto it).
  For disks and folders, it does the same as usual: the objects get
  stored there. If you feed a program, it starts running with those
  objects as arguments.

The nice thing is a lot of things that are handled in a 'funny' way
currently can be incorporated in the general scheme. For instance,
to print a file, you move it to the printer icon. It remains unspecified
wether this icon represents the device itself (i.e. the OS knows
about the printer) or a program that knows how to drive the printer
(and that might do spooling, reformatting, etc).
-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl (or jack@mcvax.uucp)
	The shell is my oyster.