I was thinking, and thought I might share it.

I read the MOS/Peg review comments and began thinking of the Mime-debate there.
Their point was that, when clicking a datafile it should open in the correct program, autmtically. And then the phrase "data oriented" came to my mind. I mean in amiga-land we usually start by chosing what application we want to use and open the file with this, not the other way around, ie click this file that we dont know what it is and not have a choice of which program to use.
This just proves that the amiga-way of doing things is more creativity oriented than Windows and other OSes that uses mime stuff to tell the user what prog to use. Ie they just watch files, when we create them.

Anyone that understands my point? Well, if you don't you don't have to, just ignore my rant.

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MIME types etc have always been a bit of an issue for me. I'm using deficons to automatically recognise most file types, but does OS3.9/OS4 improve on this (it's not perfect). You see, while it's obviously easy to open an application to create a new file, it takes more clicks to open an application to open a file rather than to open the file directly.

Perhaps there is room for a completely different method whenever Hyperion get around to writing a new Workbench. IMO things shouldn't be organised by files or applications, but by media. Why should it be a significantly different process to create a new file, than to open one?

But how a new system would work for the user? Don't ask me

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not sure I agree with you, though. I mean if I click on a a text-file, an editor pops up. If I click on a html-file, then IB fires up.. a file that it doesn't know what to do with, though..

Thing is, it's just sometimes that I like it when the operating system "tries to think for me", as there's no way it can know if I want to execute the script, or edit it. So it doesn't always work, and for those occations, you need a fast way of launching whatever it is that you want to run.

Since I don't quite understand what you're meaning, I'd love to hear a more comprehensive elaboration :)

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If I started a site about cow dung, and someone wanted to discuss dog poo, I wouldn't give a ####.

Personally I like and have enjoyed the deficon system for many years but as reflect mentioned it's not easy for a file (or program for that matter) to know what you want to do with any certain file.

Windows has been using the right click "open with..." command for awhile but I find it pretty cumbersome and the list gets pretty long with programs. Sometimes the program you want isn't there anyway but mostly you have no idea what program the file needs to open it.

I would opt for a deficon-like system with the added advantage of a "memory" for the last used program to open that file.

Maybe there are better ideas.

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I'm not sure I understand myself what I meant.
But the thing I like about the miggy-way is that you can assign different programs to different iff-files, with it's project-icon, and where there is no icon DefIcons comes to the rescue.
In windows-world when I like to open this pixel-image with paint and this photo with psp it is just not possible. A jpeg always opens with the same program.
I think thats part of what I meant, but also the more program-, hence more problemoriented, approach.
Ofcourse if you just want to view any file you just drag it to multiview, and that's that.

(I just think I again found out why I love AOS so much )

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@Joakim,

I take another point of view against data orientated workbench design.

That is task orientated.

I would prefer not to have a system where the data calls a program such as on windows - rather we should drop this type of approach in favour of ubiquitous universal format for data (XML). The idea here is that the data is wrapped in a rich, amendable, descriptive format.

Activating a data file should then be able to bring up a number of associated tasks from which the user selects what to do, or modifies the sturcture by adding a new one either to this particular data, the project it belongs to or the universal tasks available.

Hoewever, the norm should not be trawling through data, rather activiting projects, task creation, gathering resources together (application fragments and data associations).

Amiga is well placed for this sort of thing, given the widespread use of AREXX/SHEEP application ports. The very fact that the workbench is not overly "smart" is also a bonus as it does not herd users towards an application determined method of work.

Furthermore shifting away from data orientation allows data to be stored more logically and coherently rather than being placed for ease of access. This becomes more and more important as the amount of data becomes greater and greater.

Just some thoughts,
Greg Schofield
Perth Australia

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Greg Schofield, Perth Australia