🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <46100167@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:

>      then let "virtual folders" have an entirely different characterization
>      in the desktop paradigm.  For example, you might characterize a
>      "virtual folder" as a sheaf of documents held together by a paperclip.

I think that's a useful idea.  How about a simple implementation as a
display hack:  Suppose it worked that whenever I positioned two icons so
that they overlapped, the finder noticed it and instead of displaying two
overlapping icons it displayed just one icon, a sheaf of documents held
together by a paperclip.  One could presumably then grab that icon and move
all the documents as one; indeed, almost any selection of that icon would be
immediately interpretable as a selection of all the clipped-together
documents.  Exception:  I think I would like all the special commands that
reorganize the desktop to continue to preserve clipped-together documents,
and I would like an additional menu command to spread apart the documents in
a (selected) clipped-together sheaf.  Maybe there should also be a way to
peel the top document off a sheaf, like using a modifier key when mousing on
it.

    If it were done this way, then there would be no need for a special,
"make-virtual-folder" command; you'd make a pile of things by putting one
thing on top of another, just as we all do with real desktops.  (Surely
a computer interface for the rest of us should preserve the paradigms
whereby we create and manipulate messes.)  And at a slightly lower level,
the finder info data structure for a file would not need to be changed;
it already contains position information and that's all the finder would
need to determine whether to display individual icons or clipped-together
bunches.

    I think I would want this hack to work with full-sized or miniature
icons, but I think I would like the displays of documents by name, kind,
date and so forth to list all documents in a folder, whether or not they
were clipped together.

    						-- Jay Freeman

<canonical disclaimer -- these are personal opinions only>