16 Mar 1995 - Preliminary Information

The SpHyDir Idea

SpHyDir is designed to behave like the OS/2 Workplace, and to interact with it. However, SpHyDir is an ordinary application program written in VX-Rexx, not a DLL written to extend the Workplace environment. SpHyDir objects are created while the application is running and they disappear when the program ends. They cannot be dragged out of the SpHyDir windows to the desktop (except to the "Shredder" which signals SpHyDir to delete them).

SpHyDir doesn't have an Open File dialog. Such dialogs are rather ugly when the same files can be more easily located in Workplace folders. SpHyDir opens a file when a file icon is dropped into the Workarea.

The OS/2 Workplace Shell folders that contain files and other folders. This view stops at the individual file. Normally when you open a file you run the system editor, a word processor, or a spreadsheet. However, when an HTML file is dragged over and dropped on the open SpHyDir workarea window, it opens up and presents a tree of document elements. This gives the impression that the HTML File was itself some kind of Folder that contained internal components.

The document is presented as an ordered sequence of components organized in a logical tree. There are different icons for each type of component: Sections, Paragraphs, Images, Numbered and Unnumbered Lists, Preformatted Example, and so on. The tree structure reflects the view that some components "contain" other components. For example, a chapter or section contains all the other elements that fall within a particular topic. Each list contains a sequence of points.

SpHyDir was influenced by some of the discussion about compound documents and OpenDoc. OpenDoc views a document as a collection of component parts. There are text parts, image parts, table parts, and so on. At first it seemed that OpenDoc technology would be the right tool to use. However, OpenDoc assumes that each part can be precisely positioned in two dimensions on the viewing area. Web documents, however, have to be filtered through HTML which only allows the linear definition of the document as an ordered sequence of components.

The SpHyDir presentation of the document as an ordered, but structured, sequence of component objects seems to be the best compromise between HTML constraints and modern object-oriented compound document thinking. Making the object behavior consistent with the OS/2 Workplace, and then interacting with real Workplace objects, simplifies the user interface.

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Copyright 1995 PCLT -- SpHyDir Web Document Manager -- H. Gilbert
May be distributed with SpHyDir program

This document generated by SpHyDir another fine product of PC Lube and Tune.