Re: Pipes

["Jason Stokes" <jstok bluedog apana org au>]

Michael ROGERS <M.Rogers@cs.ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> My question is, how many of these features could be represented in the GUI?
> Take the example of pipes: would it be possible to create a "pipe applet"
> which would allow the user to select two programs and launch them with a
> pipe running between them? 

It would be very easy to implement some kind of standard "pipe" interface via 
the ORB -- but there's a basic conceptual issue involved, which is this.  How 
is it meaningful to "pipe" between two interactive, event-driven GUI 
applications.  A pipe is very useful for batch-mode, filter style 
applications, where you can chain the output of one to the next, but is much 
less meaningful for an interactive application.