future plans

[Mo DeJong]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Syd Polk wrote:

> 
> >There are two more important things that Gnome has that S-N currently
> >can't do:
> >
> >* Drag and drop
> >* Session management
> >
> >Both of these can be written as Tcl extensions though.
> >
> >The D&D protocol is (I believe) well-documented and in use by a few
> >groups (both Gnome and KDE at least).  (I know you've argued against
> >D&D before, but I've never understood your argument.)
> 
> I don't remember arguing against the idea of drag-and-drop. It is a great 
> feature which I would love to have.

Syd, I think he was talking about me. It is true, I have seen
some drag and drop interfaces that are just stupid and a
waste of time. On the other hand, I have seen some good
uses of drag and drop too. For example, on the Mac you
can drag a URL out of the web browser and put it on the
desktop. It turns into a click-able thingy that will open
up the web browser at the given URL later. Sure, it is
just a bookmark but it was a reasonable interface.

I have also seen some stupid uses of drap and drop,
where it just gets in the way instead of helping. One
thing that might be handy in SN is to drag a set of new
files into the symbol browser, that could add the given
files to the project. Of course, we already provide a
way to add a directory or set of files to the project
so I don't think anyone is going to be beating down
the door for that feature.

> >Gnome's session management is just XSMP.  There is an (ugly) X library
> >to help you do this; Gnome just wraps it with a nicer API.  (At some
> >point session management and configuration storage might tie together
> >somehow.  That would be harder to emulate.)
> 
> I don't know what "session management" means.

Well, for starters SN could open up with the windows in the
same place and open on the same tools as when it shut down.
Some folks really like this sort of interface, others
could not care less.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc