While I personally don't like so much integration as
used in Outlook type of software (I use separate mail/news
browser) it is important to note that many people do!
One of the nicest thing in the free software world is that neither
should "sacrifice" his habbits. Not only we have two large, integrated
desktops (KDE and GNOME), there are lots of *new* window managers
and separate applications that enables anybody to choose the pick-and-assemble
approach or the integrated approach.
However, I'd like to refer to a technical issue about this
integration:
On 06 Mar 2003 20:57:19 +0200
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> But why throw away a pretty functional graphic mail client which lets me
> view HTML and images nicely and give me mail address completion (because
> the address book is integrated in the mail client)?
My main objective is the assumption that in order to create
an integrated look and feel we must integrate the application
at the code level.
This view was very common even in the non-graphic world
(do you remember "all-in-one" ?) until pipes were introduced
to Unix.
The important lesson to take from the pipe approach is that if you
provide a good integration mechanism at the user level --
you don't have to integrate the software itself. If the user
is advanced he will do it himself:
cpio ... | gzip | remsh tape-host 'dd ... > /dev/tape'
If not, someone will provide him with a wrapper script (backup)
or alias.
The hard question is can we repeat this success with GUI?
It isn't trivial (I once tried [mentaly] to map the pipe concept
to GUI, but it really isn't powerfull enough for GUI), but
I believe we are in a stage it can be done.
What gave pipes their power was that all filters used stdin/stdout
(known channels) and ascii output (known vocabulary). The funny
thing is that in the last few years we accumulated (I think) the
required technology for the GUI world:
- XML -- common vocabulary
- Corba, Web Services -- advertised channels
- Plugins, interpreted languages -- dynamic composition
Roughly, if each GUI'let publish its interface on some "well
known channel" in a "well known language (XML)" than we can
use some generic composition mechanism (maybe a kind of scripting
mechanism) to assemble on the fly the needed "integrated application".
So, Amos will assemble for himself the addressbook with the mail program
and will dock them together, while others may do it differently.
But since I cannot be sure this strategy will work, I am very
happy that (in the free software world) there are people who
try to prove me wrong by building "highly integrated systems" :-)
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Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron
"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their
C programs."
-- Robert Firth
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