On 5/28/06, Sašo Kiselkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 5/28/06, Günther Noack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Shouldn't all that be the task of the file system layer? If the file > system layer natively provided smart folders and meta-data for files, > every application capable of using files and exporting meta-data > would get all this functionality for free. (Of course this is only > the case when there's a file manager which supports all this.) > > Is something like that planned for the Etoile file system access code?
Yes.
NEXTSTEP tried to go a different way - most of the things were available from the file viewer (files, documents, even hierarchical address lists) and most of it was done using drag'n'drop. It's a shame Apple reversed this direction and went for a more traditional approach of each app managing it's own data store.
indeed, and we want to put back the desktop+filemanager as a useful tool to _work_ on your datas, not just as a navigator (or complete mess for the desktop).
I think we need to stick to the NEXTSTEP way, BUT, we need to (and will) solve the problem of switching between windows. We'll simply use the tabbed shelf for all the temporary data the user may want. We could add a feature to the tabbed shelf which would track running apps. Each app would have it's tab inside this special set of "context tabs" and define where to the root of it's tab lies (which directory). The user can then nagivate with the tabbed shelf and drag'n'drop data into the app from the shelf without any hassle. The shelf always stays on top or can be easily hidden.
hm that could be an interesting feature, yes !
When the user switches to another app, the tabbed shelf switches to the tab of the selected app. Even better, the user can easily feed data from the shelf to a different app than it's maintainer - since it's all files which everybody understands, you'd have drag'n'drop of almost arbitrary data desktop-wide available. And the tabbed shelf remembers where you left your hierarchy when you quit an app, so when you restart it, it goes back to where it was. What do you people think?
As a general idea -- implementing things that should be in the filemanager in the first place rather than in the apps -- i'm all for it. In my view, for a lot of applications that work on data, they could implement filemanager plugin to visualize files in specific ways and not reimplement a kind of filemanager themselves. I.e., applications wouldn't be "applications" as we think about them now, each in its isolated islant, but rather much more mixed within the whole environment, using plugins/frameworks, etc. -- Nicolas Roard "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams _______________________________________________ Etoile-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-dev
