On 3/11/07, Isaiah Beerbower <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
First let me introduce myself. My name is Isaiah Beerbower, I am 15
years old and am very interested in the Étoilé user environment and
GNUstep/Cocoa. I have a basic knowledge of C, Objective-C, Io,
GNUstep/Cocoa, XML, XHTML, CSS, and programming in general. I'm sorry
that I have no completed projects to show for myself, but hope to soon
alter that.
The reason for this post is thus: I was thinking about implementing a
Mac OS X Automator like app for Étoilé and the results are what seem to
me to be a really great idea. I'll explain it below in some detail.
It sounds a good idea.
Here is my comment on the practical sides.
You need something to talk across different running applications.
Io itself is not enough. It only stays in the scope of individual application.
Therefore, using StepTalk is a must-have, or something similar.
We do have an Io bundle for StepTalk before,
but the maintainer of StepTalk move to Mac.
Therefore, you may need to maintain StepTalk on the GNUstep-side.
The code of Io bundle for StepTalk still in Etoile's svn.
After you have Io bundle for StepTalk and StepTalk for GNUstep,
you need all the applications to support StepTalk.
It is easy and simple, but mostly unimplemented.
Once you have all of these, you are ready to go.
The chain of reaction is:
Io script -> StepTalk => several applications.
Another thing to consider is to take an advantage of Services,
which Etoile want to use as much as possible.
Services is similar to your workflow, but only connects two application.
Nevertheless, the infrastructure is in GNUstep already.
We just need more service provider, and unfortunately, we don't have a lot.
In this case, you can take an advantage of unix tool.
You just need to bundles them altogether.
Services may be a good place to start with.
Yen-Ju
My idea is that in the context of an Étoilé project there be a special
variety of object called a task. Each task would automate something for
the project. For example, a task in a web developing project might batch
convert a bunch of Gimp files to PNGs, or create thumbnails for a folder
of JPEGs, or basically do any other thing that the user wants automated.
Actions would be either a script (in Io or any other StepTalk supported
language) or what for now I'll call a workflow (for want of a better,
more unique name). A user might access actions for a project on the
desktop, like other objects; in a special tab on the shelf; from a menu
item; or any combination of the former. This, however, would be better
decided by those designing/implementing the Étoilé project workspace.
What I think is more important in this post is my design for a
workflow/automator app. Instead of having my workflow being procedural
like Apple's, however, it would be designed after Io objects. To be
exact, my workflow would be merely a blueprint which could then be used
to programmatically generate an Io script. The blueprint would consist
of a graphical 'flowchart' of objects which could easily be edited by
the user. New objects could be added by dragging them from an object
tree similar to the one used in Gorm, except more user friendly, as in
the objects would be given user understandable names which resembled
everyday English, and there would be a text view which displays a
description of each object when it is selected. The objects which the
user adds to the flow chart would be Io clones of the objects in the
object tree, and would then be displayed under their parent in the tree.
Each object would have Io slots which would be filled with actions
(functions), and values (variables) each being a new object from the
tree in itself. The actions and values would be edited in a graphical
fashion. The initial object tree would be populated with gnustep-base
and gnustep-gui objects accessed through the Io-objc bridge.
If well documented, a system like this would allow relatively
non-technical users to automate their projects, and technical users to
create scripts with greater speed. Also it seems to me that it would
integrate perfectly with the rest of the Étoilé user environment.
I'm thinking this is a pretty cool idea and am hoping all of you at
Étoilé do to. If you see any problems or if I have not been clear on a
particular point please reply. Also reply if you have any additional
ideas/observations.
I haven't done any implementing yet (I just got the idea yesterday) but
I'm planning on starting this week. I am prepared to implement it
whether it is a part of the Étoilé project or not, but I would be very
happy if it was. (=
Thanks for listening,
Isaiah Beerbower.
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