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From: peter@sugar.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: every icon is an object
Message-ID: <157@sugar.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Jun-87 22:14:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: sugar.157
Posted: Wed Jun 10 22:14:58 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jun-87 00:46:59 EDT
References: <8705190042.AA14664@cogsci.berkeley.edu> <9954@decwrl.DEC.COM> <451@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 30
Summary: Pipelined Icons

> >So far, the best extension I've heard that provides pipes is a general
> >convention that some icons are filters, and that depositing on a filter
> >icon will pop up an output icon next to it.  

This is basically a dataflow system. I suggested something like this a couple
of years ago and watched it vanish without a trace. One thing to consider is
that some filters have more than one output... for example "tee". Some filters
have more than one input, for example "diff". The actual mechanism for
building the picture may vary, but the result should look something like
this:

	------     ---------------
	|FILE|-->--| IN  |       |
	|___/      |     | DIFF  |
	------     -------_______|     -------------------     ------
	|FILE|-->--| IN  | OUT   |-->--| IN  | TEE | OUT |-->--|FILE|
	|___/      |_____|_______|     -------------------     |___/
				             | OUT |
				             -------
						|
						V
						|
					     -------
					     |LPR2 |
					     \__,--'

The problem comes from the idea of icons being non-atomic. Would you start
things up by putting the DIFF in, then dropping the files into its input
baskets? Perhaps having pipelines permanently affixed to the icon and
you connect them tinkertoy fashion?