Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench)
Message-ID: <780@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 16 Mar 88 19:27:32 GMT
References: <YW8SaQy00Xo4yUc05z@andrew.cmu.edu> <318@jc3b21.UUCP> <9324@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 41
Keywords: Workbench Iris
Summary: What happens if you fire a tool without saying where ouptut goes?

In article <9324@princeton.Princeton.EDU>, gab@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Gavin Bell) writes:
>     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.

This sounds interesting.  But the question remains:  what happens if you
fire a tool without saying where ouptut goes?  It doesn't seem like a
good idea to only allow users to fire tools when they've specified
where stdout goes.  What's the matter with having a scrolling window
opened automatically when a WB process writes to stdout?

My second complaint about this approach is that it is a static setup
for a dynamic situation.  What if I want to use the same tool in
several different pipelines?  You could start color-coding your arrows
to allow different pipelines to be represented on screen at a time, but
I imagine this would get confusing.

How about having a menu item "Route Output."  You would select a tool,
then select "Route Output."  This would be like firing the tool, except
that its stdout would be piped to the next tool you selected.  Of
course, you could select "Route Output" before selecting the next tool,
in which case ITS output would be piped to the NEXT tool selected.  So
you could build arbitrary pipelines.  But the pipelines would be
dynamic:  you create them as you need them.  For feedback, after you
select "Route Ouput," a rubber-band line would emanate from the
selected tool, and track the mouse until you selected another tool.

For people who like modifier-key accelerations, if you hold the control
key while double clicking on an icon, that could be the same as
selecting the icon and then selecting "Route Output."  It would be easy
to use, if not easy to learn.

The only remaining issue is how do you handle arrows when you put the
same tool in a pipeline twice?  E.g., grep | sort | sed | grep | ....
And, of course, there's still the issue of shell scripts....
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds