Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm!nyser!cmx!goedel!chris
From: chris@goedel.uucp (Chris White)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Toolplaces for NeWS
Message-ID: <1116@cmx.npac.syr.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 89 20:24:38 GMT
Sender: usenet@cmx.npac.syr.edu
Reply-To: chris@logiclab.cis.syr.edu (Chris White)
Organization: Logic Lab, CIS Dept., Syracuse University
Lines: 34

Has anyone thought about how to implement a facility for capturing
the state of windows in NeWS? Having a command like "toolplaces" in SunView
is convenient because you don't have to reshape your windows each time you
start up.

The other half of this problem is not having a ".suntools" type
file for NeWS -- this has been discussed before, but the problem is that
there is no uniform way of telling a program that you want the main window
to have a particular size and location.

One solution might be to have each Unix process which has a NeWS window
respond to a set of queries from outside the process. There must be a way
to cycle though each of your running NeWS programs to make this work though.
It would probably be inefficient for each process to listen for these
relatively uncommon events -- perhaps we could use signals. But then what
do we do about pure NeWS programs (no C code). These are completely inside
of the NeWS server, so how could they respond to outside process queries?

A more sophisticated functionality would be to have state saved has on the
Macintosh. Much more information is preserved acrossed sessions than in
Sunview. Could this be implemented by rewriting or subclassing LiteWindow?

An even more sophisticated system would allow the copying of windows (and
their program state if application-supported). Imagine being able to copy
a terminal emulator and have the CShell state also duplicated...In fact,
the entire desktop could be thought of as a MacDraw-type program,
allowing duplication and grouping of anything on the screen.

Okay, I'm rambling on. I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to see some
discussion of these window system design ideas.

                                Chris White
                                Software Engineer
                                Applied Logic Systems