Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!labrea!rocky!ali
From: ali@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Iconification (was Re: Telling Workbench about new icons)
Message-ID: <867@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 18 Dec 87 22:50:09 GMT
References: <1076@sugar.UUCP> <2826@cbmvax.UUCP> <1103@sugar.UUCP> <4692@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: ali@rocky.stanford.edu (Ali Ozer)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 61

[I'm posting this for Stuart Ferguson, shf@solar.stanford.edu  -Ali]

|In article <4692@well.UUCP>, ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
|> In article <2095@crash.cts.com> ford@crash.CTS.COM (Michael Ditto) writes:
|> :In article <> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
|> :>Iconification is not Workbench's problem, nor should it be.  If
|> :>you want to iconify your window, then do so.  It's possible using the
|> :Go for it.  I would be impressed.  To be consistent with workbench, you
|> :should be able to double click it, or to single click it and select "Open"
|> :from the workbench menu.  Workbench "Info" should work as well.
|> 	Yes.  In fact, I just finished it last night (this morning?)...
|
|Workbench work-with's may be a theme for the second Amiga-specific issue
|of the Transactor. ...

This is only semi-related to the above, but I've been thinking alot about how
to make the Workbench a better place to live.  Living in a CLI is ok, but
there's something very appealing about a graphics & mouse world.  Then I
noticed something...

Has anyone else noticed that the Workbench is a rudimentary Object-Oriented
system?  It consists basicly of a set of objects -- called "DiskObjects,"
ironicly enough -- represented by icons, which respond to some set of 
"messages," such as Open, Info, Rename, Snapshot, Empty Trash, &c.  There is
even the begining of a hierarchy of object "Classes" as in Smalltalk.  For
example, everything is of class DiskObject; Drawers are a type of DiskObject;
Trashcan is a type of Drawer.  So a Trashcan-Class object will respond to the
open message the same way that a Drawer does, but only Trashcan drawers can
respond to the message "Empty Trash."

Anyone know if this curious parallel to Object-Orientedness was deliberate?
Is the Workbench modeled after some other, more complete O-O environment?

Workbench's problem lies in lack of user-expandability.  There is one (1) way
the user can affect the Workbench environment and that is to write new 
application programs.  The DiskObject (icon) associated with it can then
be sent the "open" or "activate" message by the Workbench and the user
defined "method" or "program" invoked.  Workbench users canNOT define *new*
types of DiskObjects, nor can they define new message types, and the only
message that a user program can receive is "open."

There is a possible, kludgy way of expanding the capabilities of the existing
Workbench.  Please tell me if I'm way off base, but wouldn't it be possible 
to create a new device that looks for all the world like a disk, but does
something else?  Disks automatically get icons on the Workbench and get 
messages when other icons are "fed into" its icon or drawer.  I was thinking
of using this fact to kludge-up a "printer" icon for the Workbench.  It
would be a device that looks like a disk and so therefore gets an icon on
the 'Bench, but whenever it received "Write" i/o requests, it would forward
them to the printer device (or PAR or SER).  This way, you could grab the icon
for a text file and drop it on the "printer" icon and the file would print on
the printer.

|Others with unique not-so-obvious wbench interface applications for public
|consumption are encouraged to contact Transactor now

How about that one.  Think it would work?  Of course, if its already been
done, just pretend I knew that all along ... :-)

	Stuart Ferguson (shf@Solar.Stanford.EDU)
	Action by HAVOC