Application vs. Document focus (Was: Re: Third party extensions to apps)

[Stefan Urbanek]

(i'm crossposting this to the gnustep list for more opinions)

Original post: http://d2dc.net/list-archives/desktop/2004-June/000071.html

On 2004-06-19 18:56:04 +0200 Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com> wrote:
> 
> Le 19 juin 04, à 17:45, Nicolas Roard a écrit :
>> 
>> On the other hand, it could perhaps be interesting to have "services" 
>> directly callable by the application -- the programmer will then be able to 
>> build is application in reusing directly some components of other 
>> programs...
>> That's something that could be done using frameworks, but not every app 
>> will provide frameworks. Basically, it would be to provide services not 
>> directly related to the pasteboard content, using DO for communicating. A 
>> simple broker could be used to advertise/find services.
>> 
> 
> Actually, another interest with this approach is that the user could specify 
> (if he wants) which components of which program he wants to use... (say, 
> having a component for displaying an image, or displaying an html page, or 
> writing a text, etc.). Adding that with StepTalk for the glue, we could have 
> a quite nice programming env ..

Can you give a real application example for that? I am not sure whether I 
understand what do you exactly mean.

> Although a real plus for that would be to use embedded components, as 
> "distinct" components won't be able to cover all the needs (yet that could be 
> useful). Alex, do you have ideas about how to do embedded gui components ?

Well ... smells like OLE. Good idea, sometimes practical, however usualy 
terrible for use. But ... is there any other option? Perhaps yes, but i do not 
know about any that is really used. Instead of that, it would be better to have 
document/task/project focused desktop environment instead of application 
environment. What's needed? MVC for the whole desktop. You have C applications 
and V applications and they together work on common M document/task/project. 
Problem with this is, that it is not possible to do that big switch from 
current application centric state to the document cetrict state.

On the other hand ... why not to try it? With the nature of ObjectiveC and 
GNUstep it can be done, I think.

Any ideas how it can be implemented?

Stefan Urbanek
-- 
http://stefan.agentfarms.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win.
- Mahatma Gandhi