Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!dalcs!garfield!john13
From: john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IFF archive proposal (really feeding icons to applications)
Message-ID: <4419@garfield.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 88 05:23:52 GMT
References: <6173@j.cc.purdue.edu> <22697@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell)
Distribution: na
Organization: Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's
Lines: 32

In article <22697@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> bryce@hoser.berkeley.edu (Bryce Nesbitt) writes:
>3> Make it easy to just click on a bunch of icons/drawers and 
>   compress/combine them.

I know everyone always says to do this, but the only (supported) way is at
program startup. Not in some interactive fashion, where the program keeps
running and you click on various icons after selecting some option in your
own program, such as "compress using scheme A", "update this file in the
archive", etc.

Are there any concrete ideas on this topic aside from suggestions to C-A to
make it possible at some time in the future?

Right now it ought to be easily possible to determine which icons are
selected by examining the gadget list of the Workbench backdrop window. This
might require dragging icons onto the main WB window from inside their
subdirectories though.

To build such functions into 1.X, why not have workbench (the program) create
a public port with nodes strung from it detailing what icons are currently
present in the system, what their status is (eg selected or not), and any
other relevant info.

Workbench doesn't do anything similar to this now does it? I've never looked
to see if it makes any information accessible to programs not necessarily
started by clicking on an icon.

John
-- 
"Am I dreaming, or was there a show on this weekend called 'Jimmy the Greek:
 Live at the Apollo'?"
					-- David Letterman