From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,b95a522100671708 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!proxad.net!news.cs.univ-paris8.fr!informatik.uni-bremen.de!cs.tu-berlin.de!uni-duisburg.de!not-for-mail From: Georg Bauhaus Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: For the AdaOS folks Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:28:12 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GMUGHDU Message-ID: References: <41d011b6$0$320$ba620e4c@news.skynet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de X-Trace: a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de 1104164892 2820 134.91.1.34 (27 Dec 2004 16:28:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.uni-duisburg.de NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:28:12 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.5.8-20010221 ("Blue Water") (UNIX) (HP-UX/B.11.00 (9000/800)) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7235 Date: 2004-12-27T16:28:12+00:00 List-Id: Adrien Plisson wrote: : development. they don't want to lose their investment, so they target : what is widely used: I don't think there is a technical OS-related problem. Windows has a lot under the hood. You can have a document centered approach. You can forget about applications if you wish and instead combine frames on one and the same virtual sheet of paper, where each frame's content is managed by different modules. I.e. you choose data, not programs (OO vs. application). You can have "smart" drag and drop. But all this isn't usually in the *showcase* when people are told how they can use Windows. (One neighbor/collegue showing another, etc.) So it is hardly known that there is OLE, COM, COM+, DCOM, ActiveX, I forget the most recent name of the same OO concept. Have you ever seen anyone recently moving a file with a mouse from one folder to another, and not using File->Save As? I think it is just a lack "social visibility" of features that make the "modern" features less used. Example: You want to load a document in a text editor. Typical solution: File->Open etc. Possible solution: drag the file icon from the folder onto the editor window Windows merges: The File->Open dialog *is* a folder view, with a slightly different look. Clever, eh? (Programmer's IDE solution: the file in question is loaded *automatically* when you instruct the computer to show you the declaraion of some identifier.) Unfortunately, the traditional appearance of file open folders etc. doesn't invite people to quickly abandon the use of a specialised file centered dialog window. They could because all the functionality *and* *more* is already provided by the OS shell. Secondary effect: programmers who do no know the OO side of folders and icons (etc.) start copying the traditional ways (File->Open). But they do not copy the possibilities hidden in the object model of folders, frames, etc. For example, the File->* dialog in stand-alone Gimp 1.x was terribly outdated technically. Why? Now Gimp is frequently associated with the GNOME, and GNOME stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment, but where are the system objects in Gimp's file manipulation dialogs? Do they look like system folders, the same as hopefully in all other GNOME programs? And then, why do we need File->* dialogs at all when there is a system component for file manipulation? The GNOME pages (Human Interface Guidelines) still speak of associations between files and applications. Pity because there is so much more under the hood than files and applications. The components view deserves more attention I think. Maybe Mono will help to achieve this. -- Georg