Re: Drag & Drop Functionality

["Jason F." <jasonf the-i net>]

> > By the way, what ever happened to application managers? Just because
> > Microsoft deemed them uncool, does that mean we have to copy them? The
> > app manaer in CDE was  about the most useful feature it had, due mainly
> > to the aforementioned drag/drop feature. Plus it freed me from those
> > horrid menus!
> 
> What is an application manager?
> 
> --
> miguel@gnu.org

You can think of an application manager as a combination of gmc and the
panel drawers. When you open up an app manager, it opens in a standard
window like gmc. However, instead of displaying files, it displays icons
that represent the various applications on your system, just like the
icons your panel drawer contains. Most app managers also have folders to
let you classify your apps in various groups--games, office apps, web
browsers, etc..

Now the "ideal" GNOME app manager that I described in the first post
would do the following:

* Slide out from behind the gnome panel when activated by a small tab on
top of the panel.

* Optionally retract when apps are launched.

* Automatically add new gnome compatible apps to the correct folder
(similar to what the main menu does now)

* Allow you to drag the applications icons (and folder groups) onto the
desktop and into panel drawers.

* Allow you to drag files from gmc and the desktop into an app icon and
open the file with that app.

* Of course, be totally customizable

When I used to run CDE, I had all of my applications in my app manager
(there was no menu....life was good), had my three most used apps on the
desktop, and my other favorite apps in the panel drawer.

What was really cool about the app manager was that you could could make
icons that, when clicked by themselves didn't do anything, but when a
file was put into them, did some very common tasks. For example, I had
an untar/unzip icon that ran a little script. When you put a file from
your file manager into this icon, the script would  determine what kind
of compression the file used, uncompress it, and then untar it, and then
display what files it just extracted into an xterm, just by dragging a
file into it! Needless to say, it was a great timesaver.

Considering how far GNOME is coming along, I think it'd be an injustice
to deprive it of this sort of functionality.

Regards,
Jason