[openbeos] Re: Data or App Centric?

>> and ultimately, you shouldn't even have to bother with _how_ to
>> send the e-mail -- just select the picture and drag it to a
>> Person file,
>
> That would be even cooler, but either one needs to carry the
> "task descriptor", because you can do plenty of thing with an
> "image", and so you with a "person".
>
That's true. How about presenting the user with a popup-menu when dropping
the image on the person file?  Also, would be nice if one could expand the
icon for the Person file when you drop something to it, revealing more
information. Care needs to be taken to avoid information overload,
however!

Anyway: an image is a file, so it should have a Send To Person option -
that's a given.  Furthermore, you might want to change the icon of a
person - that's another task.  But other than these two, I can't come up
with much else to do.  Whichever tasks we choose to add, the main point
here is to be _able_ to do this, and make it extensible enough to allow
for other types of operations.  I think that once this framework is in
place, adding new operations shouldn't be very difficult.

> The "Task Manager" Drag-n-Drop, however, would be the central
> ..uhmm... task manager and metaphor for performing anything on
> the computer. It's the "glue" that holds it all together, whereas
> other approaches have too much potential for confusion, like that
> dumb Windows XP CD-insert notification dialog, that confuses the
> hell out of anyone not knowing what to do.

Good idea.  Would this Task Manager be a visible user app, or a background
server returning possible tasks given a source (the image) and a target
(the Person file)? (Okay, so that was a slightly skewed question -- I'm
sure you've figured out how I'd like it to work... ;)

-- tic

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