RE: [Nautilus-list] Re: GNOME user environment brainstorming

[Lion Kimbro <lion lithtech com>]

<QUOTE>
Another nice feature was the installation of programs. You
dragged a directory from one place and droppped it somewhere
else! If the dir contains a script with a certain name then that
script is run to start the program within when the dir is double-
clicked from the filer (rather than simply opening the dir). If
there was a particular image file within the dir then that became
the applications icon (in place of the default dir icon). This
kind of thing may be harder to implement with unix-like systems
where an applications files are spread across the system (and
package management had to be invented to deal with it...)
</QUOTE>

  How does RISC OS take care of registrations?

  These ideas are simple and intuitive, but that doesn't necessarily make
them good.
  "Simple as possible, but no simpler".

  Consider this:

  You have a software bus. When an application receives mail, it wants to
tell all the other applications that an email has just arrived. An
application that is dormant needs to be loaded into memory so that it can
hear the announcement, since it has registered interest in this type of
event. This requires that the bus software knows about the existance of the
application and how to awaken it. Application registration provides this
notification.

  Program registration processes are good because they allow the OS (and by
extension, other programs) to see each other automatically and interact with
one another. It's good because it allows for standard indexing and rapid
search.

  Sure, there's the downside that you can't just run around deleting files.
  But I don't hear many complaints that I can't just run into /etc/ and
start deleting files at random.
  (I have a naive student who did this, trying to uproot sendmail from his
system.)

  I suppose I could just not say anything confrontational, but I'm really
surprised by the # of posts here saying, "Wow! That's an awesome idea! (How
original!)" It's like reading about the amazing ".tgz" packaging system. I
figure someone should voice a dissenting opinion.

  Take care,
    Lion =^_^=