Re: Pipes

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

>  Perhaps the command-line pipe is too limiting a concept - what I'm talking
> about is a way for the user to specify different types of connections 
> between components, to assemble an application. The idea of plugging together 
> a word processor, a spelling checker and a printer applet via CORBA is 
> fantastic, but we need an intuitive way to specify these connections. Maybe 
> this comes down to individual solutions for each application, but some kind 
> of standard "visual syntax" for grouping components would be useful. The
> smarter Gnome is at identifying what components do and what types of data
> they can handle, the more intuitive this can be.

In that case, I would propose some kind of "component assembler" widget, that would allow you to drag and drop components in and out of your application framework.  For example, you'd have a diagram of your application's components, with a plug for "spellchecker", and you'd be able to place there any properly registered spellchecker you had on your system.

-- 
Jason Stokes: jstok@bluedog.apana.org.au