Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!sri-spam!sri-unix!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench)
Message-ID: <727@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 3 Mar 88 20:50:22 GMT
References: <YW8SaQy00Xo4yUc05z@andrew.cmu.edu> <318@jc3b21.UUCP> <43704@sun.uucp>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 80
Summary: A few more gripes

In article <43704@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes:
>   o Provide some level of file type identification. This can be as simple
>     as IFF/Binary/Text/Unknown (2 bits) to something more sophisticated.
>   o Provide a default Icon for files of the above types, additionally a 
>     default 'drawer' icon should be available as well.
>   o Provide a menu item to enable and disable the display of 'default'
>     icons. 
>   o Add menu items that include all of the actions one might associate with
>     the CLI.
> 
> So, the questions for the gallery are :
>   o Did I miss any of your favorite gripes?

Yup.  How about:

    o Make COPY look inside an .icon file for a specific copy program
      to run in order to copy that icon.  Not finding one, copy as
      usual.  Similarly for delete, rename, etc.  This would make WB
      more object-oriented, and would allow icons to represent more
      than a single file, for example.

    o To get REALLY fancy with this idea, allow a file (or it's .icon)
      to specify methods for opening, writing a buffer to, reading a
      buffer from, seeking in, etc., that file.  This would allow some
      really WONDERFUL things, e.g., files to be stored in compressed
      form, but still be read and written by ordinary programs oblivious
      to the storage technique.  Or source code files could be stored in
      pre-parsed format, and be greped, printed, etc., as usual, but
      editors and compilers could have special knowledge about reading
      them in as pre-parsed files.  The possibilities are endless.  I
      know it sounds pretty radical, but I have some ideas on how to
      implement it.  I think it could make the Amiga about the
      best-integrated microcomputer environment going.

    o Provide a mechanism to allow users to add items to WB menus, and
      to allow users to add new WB menus.  And a mechanism for
      associating keyboard bindings for these items.

    o Provide some mechanism for specifying flags (or, more generally,
      any arguments other than files) to a tool.  I don't have any good
      ideas of how to do this.

    o Allow ASSIGNment of paths of directories to names.  This may not
      sound like a workbench issue, but it does affect how an icon
      specifies its default tool.  Having available a global path would
      make that so much easier, and would allow users to move tools
      around without worrying about whether projects will be able to
      find their tools.  I assume CA would also provide a standard name
      for the execute search path (what we now refer to as the PATH).
      Path ASSIGNs give more than that, though.  Since they would be
      global, they allow tools to search paths for things other than
      executables, e.g., devices, libraries, includes, etc.  We could
      move our most frequently referenced such things to ram: for
      speed, without having to move them all.

    o Allow dropping an icon into a tool to fire up that tool.

    o Allow snapshotting tools (or projects, I suppose) onto the
      background.

    o CA should supply preference-type tools (probably accessed through
      preferences) to set up assigns, specify background programs to
      run on startup, which keymap to use, that sort of thing.  Try to
      minimize the user's need to hack his startup-sequence.  Leave
      startup-sequence around, for generality, but try to minimize the
      need to hack it in order to do anything interesting.

That's enough for now (:-). Actually, I think if we had all that, we
would find some REALLY fancy things showing up taking advantage of the
generality.  I believe all these are things that have to come from CA,
unless we talk about replacing WB and DOS.  BTW, not all of my
suggestions are original, and they are in addition to those copied from
Chuck.

So how about it, CA, and all you Amiga hackers out there?  Any interest
in any of these for 1.9 (:-)?  What great tools could you have for us
if you had these things to build on?
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds