Re: [Usability]A Challenge: Describe the GNOME 4.0 interface.

[Dave Bordoley <bordoley msu edu>]

On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 08:21, Dave Bordoley wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 04:45, Robert Renling wrote:
> > 
> > On Thursday 07 November 2002 23.26, Dave Bordoley wrote:
> > > I'm in a dreamy mood so here I go :)
> > >
> > > Key elements to my "ideal" ui are:
> > > 1. Document/Object oriented UI.
> > > Applications no longer exist. Instead there are only views. Views are
> > > pluggable into the desktop shell. Also since the ui is object oriented,
> > > new views can be built upon existing views, or by combining views (for
> > > example a code editor inherits from from a generic text editor).
> > 
> > Could you elaborate this subject a bit more :D
> > 
> 
 Hmm I'm not totally sure how to elaborate on this.
 
 Well last nite I had this crazy idea that everything would be a nautilus
 view (this is purely at theoretical level since I'm not sure if nautilus
 is robust to support this right now or if this is even a good idea). At
 the shell level the only common window element is the menu bar. Common
 to all views is the view as menu, which lets users switch how they are
 viewing an object. All other menu items, toolbars, statusbars etc. are
 view/object dependent dependent. For most views you would have a root
 view (similar to nautilus' FM-directory-view) that provides the basic
 menu structure, toolbars etc. Other views could build upon this view to
 provide other functionality. 
 
 This is just one idea of an implementation (and probably wrong one but
 thats ok).
 
 
> > 
> > >
> > > 2. Database file system
> > > Hierarchies are no more. All folders are the result of database queries
> > > based on mime types, file content (ex. you could create a folder
> > > containing all files with the term 'gnome'), and other persistent mime
> > > data (ex. all files with certain emblems).
> > 
> > similar to the beos filesystem layout and hooks?
> 

 I haven't ever actually used beos so I'm not sure...
 
 dave