Re: Application vs. Document focus (Was: Re: Third party extensions to apps)

[Rogelio Serrano]

On 2004-06-21 03:31:49 +0800 Stefan Urbanek <stefan@agentfarms.net> wrote:

> (i'm crossposting this to the gnustep list for more opinions)
> 
> Original post: http://d2dc.net/list-archives/desktop/2004-June/000071.html
> 
> On 2004-06-19 18:56:04 +0200 Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Le 19 juin 04, à 17:45, Nicolas Roard a écrit :
>>> 
>>> On the other hand, it could perhaps be interesting to have "services" 
>>> directly callable by the application -- the programmer will then be able 
>>> to build is application in reusing directly some components of other 
>>> programs...
>>> That's something that could be done using frameworks, but not every app 
>>> will provide frameworks. Basically, it would be to provide services not 
>>> directly related to the pasteboard content, using DO for communicating. A 
>>> simple broker could be used to advertise/find services.
>>> 
>> 
>> Actually, another interest with this approach is that the user could 
>> specify (if he wants) which components of which program he wants to use... 
>> (say, having a component for displaying an image, or displaying an html 
>> page, or writing a text, etc.). Adding that with StepTalk for the glue, we 
>> could have a quite nice programming env ..
> 
> Can you give a real application example for that? I am not sure whether I 
> understand what do you exactly mean.
> 
>> Although a real plus for that would be to use embedded components, as 
>> "distinct" components won't be able to cover all the needs (yet that could 
>> be useful). Alex, do you have ideas about how to do embedded gui components 
>> ?
> 
> Well ... smells like OLE. Good idea, sometimes practical, however usualy 
> terrible for use. But ... is there any other option? Perhaps yes, but i do 
> not know about any that is really used. Instead of that, it would be better 
> to have document/task/project focused desktop environment instead of 
> application environment. What's needed? MVC for the whole desktop. You have C 
> applications and V applications and they together work on common M 
> document/task/project. Problem with this is, that it is not possible to do 
> that big switch from current application centric state to the document 
> cetrict state.
> 
> On the other hand ... why not to try it? With the nature of ObjectiveC and 
> GNUstep it can be done, I think.
> 
> Any ideas how it can be implemented?
> 
> Stefan Urbanek
> 

We need more metadata associated with the document. I like the idea a lot. Goes 
well with a "spatial" desktop. 
Its a nice way to abstract the unix filesystem.

Regards,
Roger