Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!sri-unix!quintus!pds
From: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: How 'Bout HyperCard!
Message-ID: <956@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 10 May 88 21:19:51 GMT
References: <15372@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <31411@linus.UUCP>
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 37
Summary: Just the clipboard isn't enough

In article <31411@linus.UUCP>, sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes:
> I would like to see a variety of hypermedia and hypertext software
> products for the Amiga.  If *any* machine was a natural for hypermedia
> and hypertext, it's the Amiga.
> ...
> What's important is support for the clipboard device so you can paste
> among products.  I wish more software vendors supported this for the
> Amiga.

Unfortunately, the clipboard isn't enough.  Yes, you can use it to move
text from one application to another.  But what's needed is a way to
move ANYTHING from one application to another.  I have two
reservations, a minor one and a major one.

First the minor one.  I think clipping is not as good a metaphor as
selection.  I'd rather have a SELECTION: device that supports the
operations of setting and finding the current selection.  This seems
better in terms of user interface (it only takes one action --
selecting something somehow, rather than two -- selecting something and
then cutting or copying it).  It's also probably better in terms of
memory usage and performance:  setting the selection only requires
setting a pointer, rather than copying a (potentially huge) chunk of
memory).

Ok, my big reservation about clipboards:  they really NEED to be
object-oriented.  When I select (or copy/cut) a spreadsheet, or
animation, or picture, or chunk of a wysiwyg document, it needs
to carry along with it information about how to manipulate it, or AT
LEAST how to display it.  The only general way to do this that I know
of is with code.  The code needs to be encapsulated with the data.
Someone needs to spec an abstract datatype (object-oriented) object
structure and a standard set of messages (operations) that all such
objects are expected to perform, e.g., display, highlight, unhighlight,
and print.
-- 
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
...!sun!quintus!pds