Re: Drag & Drop Functionality

[Michael Hall <mhall riverside org>]

On Sat, Feb 13, 1999 at 01:25:07AM -0600, Jason F. wrote:

  I don't want to get into a 'this should do this because that does' but
this application manager thing seems to remind me a lot of OS/2 and its
desktop manager (pmshell). I've personally never (except for a real old
3.0) run any Miscrosoft OS's and went the OS/2 route years ago and still
have a box up for my BBS. 
  I definitely agree with Jason on 'menus' (yuck) and liked the OS/2
idea of OS/2s objects with icons, folders, etc. that you could drag
and drop data (or whatever) files on and the app would just open up
and handle them. I also had some 'do nothing by themselves' type icons
but when you dropped a file on them one would strip out html tags
another would parse/display a log file, etc.
  Anything like this being put in GNOME would definitely get my vote :-)

> > > 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..

<snip>

> 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.

--
It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

Mike Hall <mhall@riverside.org>, (MH993)   -    http://www.riverside.org
System Administrator (*nix, Perl, CGI hacker, certified OS/2 Specialist)