Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!princeton!notecnirp!gab
From: gab@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Gavin Bell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench)
Message-ID: <9324@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 88 18:41:07 GMT
References: <YW8SaQy00Xo4yUc05z@andrew.cmu.edu> <318@jc3b21.UUCP> <9247@sunybcs.UUCP> <774@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Sender: news@princeton.Princeton.EDU
Reply-To: gab@notecnirp.UUCP (Gavin Bell)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University
Lines: 42
Keywords: Workbench Iris
Summary: Description of WB-like environment on Silicon Graphics Workstations

In article <774@sandino.quintus.UUCP> pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes:
>In article <9247@sunybcs.UUCP>, ugpete@sunybcs.uucp (Peter Theobald) writes:
>> When you select 'redirect', you then point the mouse at the input file
>> 'click', then draw an arrow towards the application, 'click'. Voila! An arrow
>> represents the input redirection.
>The basic idea is sound, but there are user interface ideas to be
>settled.
  There's a rather nice tool environment that runs on Mega-$$ Silicon
Graphics Iris workstations.  It's called 'ConMan' (for connection manager-
it has nothing to do with the Amiga program of the same name).  The way
it works:
   You run conman first.  It puts up a very small icon on your screen
somewhere.  Then you run each of the tools you wish to use.  They do
initialization and each puts up its own window or icon, then waits.  Now,
the user pops up the conman menu, which has only three selections: 'show
connections', 'hide connections', and 'get out of conman'.  Choosing
show connections will bring up lots of little menus, one for each tool.
The connections for a tool performing 3-d transformations would be:
'-->transformation in' and 'transformation out-->' -- for a tool to
display a three-dimensional object: '-->object transformation in',
'-->object in', 'bitmap out-->'.
    To hook up tools, you simple click on the in's and out's you want
connected-- a line will be drawn between the entries.  To remove a
a connection, just click on the two ends of the connection you want
removed.  One output may be sent to many different inputs, although
only one connection per input is allowed.
    Tools know when to write ouput because they have a menu entry of
'write', which will essentially execute the tool and send it's output
down its connections (there are two sets of menus, the connection menus
and a tools own private menus-- tools that produce output are written so
that they wait for the 'write' menu option to be chosen, tools that
always read input can just wait for it to magically appear).
    Anyway, this user interface works very well.  It is easy to use and
intuitive.  But, the snag is that tools have to be re-written to do the
conman calls, and the Unix kernal itself has to be modified.
    I think a similar workbench interface is possible for the amiga.  The
connections would be 'Stdin', 'Stdout', and 'Stderr'.  The 'lines' inbetween
programs would be pipes, and the manager of all this would have a big
'DoIt!' button, which would make it hook up everything and start everything
going.
    Well, I have a few more ideas, but I'm going to wait and see how much
discussion this idea gets...