A revolutionary OS/Programming Idea

[Joerg F. Wittenberger]

John Newman <jmn381@yahoo.com> writes:

> Aleric wrote:
> 
> > On a similar vein, I'd like to be able, when viewing
> > the GUI an 
> > application has presented, to do something like
> > "shift + right click" on 
> > a button to get a menu of programming actions - such
> > as opening up the 
> > source code for the action handler for the button
> > and so on.
> 
> Yes, that's exactly what I am talking about.  Just
> right-click, menu pops down, one of the options is
> "source folder" or something like that.  Any and every
> object in any and every program can be toggled in the
> same way--from the backround, to the buttons, to the
> icons, to the address barsl, etc.

BTW: this is how I'm trying to organise my progs in Askemos.  Just
it's quite a way to have a consistent UI.  Currently I have to add a
well know string to a URL to make my browser show the source of an
agent.  And the agent still has to comply with that particular
convention and actually format it's AST into readable source code.  To
make your idea (frankly I'm aming at the same) work, you would have to
create for instance XUL (or watever) to create a click-through AST
representation.

> Also, this visual filesystem is going to be slick.  No
> popups telling you that files are transfering from one
> place to another, just automatic, and fast.  Also it
> might be slightly 3d, where files are represented as
> boxes, and boxes are pushed and pulled on the z plane
> through the scroll wheel, or by clicking and holding
> on a button on the window bar while moving the mouse
> up or down.  This way, one can move boxes into and out
> of other boxes, and have more organization space.  But
> that is really secondary to the idea of a visual
> programming file system.

Apart from the waste of computing ressources, as I would call this
idea (without actually dismissing it, this here is a matter of taste,
and I guess I just have a different one), are you really sure, you
want that?  It would be great, if we had _nice_ 3D input devices with
physical feed back.  (No a mouse with brakes on the ball is not enough
for me.)

> Or, maybe those structural editors just sucked.  I've
> been research what visual editors there are for days,
> and none of them really do what I am talking about.  I
> want a simple interface, similar to the windows

mee too ;-)

> explorer window--I want to right click on the editor
> area, go to Insert-->new file, click, and have it pop
> up--I want to open the file into a new window, right
> click editor area, go to Insert-->new Data
> Structure-->new Array, click, there it is--Then I want
> to right click on my array file and go to properties,
> and go to the "number of elements" text field and
> enter "50" and leave the other fields default, and

... and _enter_ ... this is the point.  My personal observation (not
backed with any research, at least I'm not aware, but I gess that's my
fault, read no research, not even on the net): the move between the
mouse and the keyboard is the killer.  After a while you get used to
type with 10 fingers.  For that you need to position them initially.
After that writing is automatic.  This positioning time kills you.
That's why I control my window positions etc. from the keyboard.

best regards

/Jörg

-- 
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