Re: Passing thought about nautilus embedding

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 07:30:32PM -0500, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote:
> >
> >
> >Personally, I don't like this model. I prefer different and smaller apps
> >to handle different file types.
> >
> me too. spatial desktop.  even the staroffice guys decoupled their 
> monolith monster.

Woah! Too much context dropped. I was talking about implementation, not
user interface.

Recap:

Interface:
  Like the Lisa, MacOS pre-X, OS/2, etc. No MDI. No browser weirdness.
  One window shows either one document, one folder, one control panel,
   one utility, one dialog, or one alert.
  (Tabs and trees being outside the scope of my consideration for the moment.)
  Nothing radical here at all. It's the same thing everyone is used to. It's
   what began to be eroded when MDI was introduced and what MacOS lost when
   the spatial Finder was obliterated in version 10.

Implementation (sans detail):
  There is one program which provides an (almost) empty menubar, maybe a
   toolbar, maybe a statusbar. To show the type "directory" it loads the
   IconicDirectoryView component which in turn fills the menubar and shows
   icons for the files in the directory. To show the type "document suitable
   for printing" it loads the PrintableDocumentView component which in turn
   fills the menubar and the toolbar and shows the document.
  This is basically what happens when AbiWord embeds a Gnumeric component,
   except that now a very stripped down Nautilus is embedding the former
   top-level.
  Various items from the File, Edit, and Help menus are expected for any
   application, so the shell could have those in advance and just invoke
   the appropriate method for the component.
  If it is done correctly, sweeping changes should be simpler. The menubar
   could be extracted from the window and placed, as on MacOS, at the top
   of the screen. File->Save could be eliminated by the shell periodically
   invoking the save method of the component. Printing special document
   types by dragging a document icon to a printer icon could be done by
   invoking the print method on a component without displaying it. Methods
   might be invoked from file icon popup menus too.

Unless I'm mistaken, that was the point of the Gnu network object model
 environment. It just got sidetracked into applets, snazzamataz,
 configuration wars, glitz, and all things browsable.


Cheers,
Greg