[comp.windows.open-look] Drag & drop from OpenWindows filemgr into emacs

stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters) (01/28/91)

Want to edit that file?  Just drag it from the filemgr and drop it
into that emacs window you've got over there.

You say you like vi?  Well, then d&d it into your vi window.  First,
though, you'll have to change the hard-coded emacs command in the
source for my special window.  (Well, maybe not ... by the time you
ask for the code, I might have a configurable version.)

Catching up on my paper mail, I spotted something in a trade rag about
Motif planning on having d&d out in July.  Well, golly, you mean they
don't have it yet?  How backward of them.  Having just been talking to
Bruce Barnett about wanting to implement d&d from the fgilemgr into my
emacs front end window, I says to myself "Self, it's time."

Counting time chatting with Bruce, reading the d&d section in that
nice book by Heller, and actually coding, it all took maybe an hour,
which I guess is still a pretty long time to write six lines of code.

Of course, I already had a lot of code to wrap it in.  If you write
and ask, I'll mail you the whole bit.  (Sorry, no ftp yet, and you
will have to agree not to redistribute it for now.)

What you get is source for a window tool designed to be a front end to
implement mouse-based editing.  It translates mouse events into edit
commands in a configurable way.  I wrote the first version in 1986
when emacs was on version 17 and didn't believe in mice.  That was
under SunView, of course.  It was kind of fun log onto a VMS VAX in a
Sun window, run emacs on the VAX, and use the mouse to edit.  (Yeah,
I'm given to showing off.)

Anyway, I still like it and have converted it to XView, and now I show
off by d&d'ing a file icon from the filemgr into my emacs window.  At
this rate, I never will write my NeWS version, sigh.

Since the window catches the mouse, I called the SunView version
"feline" - under UNIX, the name "cat" is taken :-)   The XView version
I christened "felix".
--
Dick St.Peters, GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters@crd.ge.com	uunet!crd.ge.com!stpeters