can someone explain the workflow concept?

[Zhang Weiwu]

Introduction to etolie project says:

    allow users to create their own workflow by reshaping or recombining
    provided Services (aka Applications), Components etc.

This is in fact very attractive idea, but I really consider it a great
challenge to implement nicely. I read a lot of introduction and articles
on etoile website, but found very little information on how this (ease
of adapting workflow) was done or designed. The screenshot also doesn't
seems obviously demonstrating this.

The ability of adapting a workflow is best explained with scenarios. Say:

    * A photographer might need to import photos from cameras, pick
      images in the first round, crop and retouch (brightness etc) in
      the second round, print or make DVD of the result etc. This could
      be a daily task. It involve multiple services: image viewer, image
      browser, retouching software, album manager with version control
      feature, DVD burner, printer monitor (for spool). How he can
      improve workflow by customizing, reshaping or recombining services?
    * A web designer might need to regularly update a website. She gets
      latest content as email attachment from customer, opens it and
      copy & paste it without format, add HTML tags to it and preview,
      run the update on local web server, retouch images, check for dead
      links and validate web-pages, commit the change to svn in chunks,
      finally ends her day's job by synchronizing the result to the
      productional website. During the whole process she uses a mind
      mapping software for keeping overview of the todo list of the
      project and keep planning for the future things to do to the
      website. She uses a lot of software, How can she optimize her
      workflow? She would use software like gimp, kompozer (for working
      with HTML tables), jedit for working with HTML/CSS, thunderbird,
      rapidsvn, unison (for sync result to the productional server),
      openoffice (for reading original documents from customers),
      freemind, multiple browsers for testing (opera, firefox, konqueror
      for webkit etc) and even accounting software to account her time
      on the project. How can she customizing, reshaping or recombining
      services?

I know etoile probably could not deliver everything needed now to
optimize these workflows, especially when most software are not based on
GNUStep for users to integrate. But if the project can present the
public an "image", that how things gonna be, it would bring a lot of
interest from people to the project, creating community that make this
happen. Thus if we have clear ideas how we gonna do, how the difference
users would feel if they start to use etoile (with example scenario like
I gave above), then we gain support. How do you think?

And can you paint a picture based on some scenario how Etoile evolves to be?

Thanks
Zhang Weiwu
Beijing, China.

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[Zach LeBar]

I second Zhang Weiwu's plea for some information on how Etoile is  
going to revolutionize the way we look at computers. I first heard  
about Etoile on FLOSS Weekly and the possibilities that this project  
presented were staggering to me. I instantly felt the project was  
something I'd be interested in being a part of. The problem is I'm a  
graphic and web designer, not a C/Obj-C programmer (though I am  
learning, and it's been going well). I think you could get a lot of  
public interest, as Zhang Weiwu mentioned, if "workflows" could be  
presented that would make for more efficient use of one's time on a  
computer. But, then, as Zhang also mentioned, if you look at the  
screenshot of Etoile, it just looks like a purple version of GNOME. I  
don't know if this is because the work thus far has been "behind the  
scenes" type work, the code foundation to support such revolutionary  
concepts for using a computer. In any event, I'd love to see some more  
stuff come out of Etoile geared more towards the end user, why this  
project will make their lives, easier, or perhaps better.

Sincerely,
Zach LeBar


On May 3, 2009, at 12:03 PM, Zhang Weiwu wrote:

> Introduction to etolie project says:
>
>    allow users to create their own workflow by reshaping or  
> recombining
>    provided Services (aka Applications), Components etc.
>
> This is in fact very attractive idea, but I really consider it a great
> challenge to implement nicely. I read a lot of introduction and  
> articles
> on etoile website, but found very little information on how this (ease
> of adapting workflow) was done or designed. The screenshot also  
> doesn't
> seems obviously demonstrating this.
>
> The ability of adapting a workflow is best explained with scenarios.  
> Say:
>
>    * A photographer might need to import photos from cameras, pick
>      images in the first round, crop and retouch (brightness etc) in
>      the second round, print or make DVD of the result etc. This could
>      be a daily task. It involve multiple services: image viewer,  
> image
>      browser, retouching software, album manager with version control
>      feature, DVD burner, printer monitor (for spool). How he can
>      improve workflow by customizing, reshaping or recombining  
> services?
>    * A web designer might need to regularly update a website. She gets
>      latest content as email attachment from customer, opens it and
>      copy & paste it without format, add HTML tags to it and preview,
>      run the update on local web server, retouch images, check for  
> dead
>      links and validate web-pages, commit the change to svn in chunks,
>      finally ends her day's job by synchronizing the result to the
>      productional website. During the whole process she uses a mind
>      mapping software for keeping overview of the todo list of the
>      project and keep planning for the future things to do to the
>      website. She uses a lot of software, How can she optimize her
>      workflow? She would use software like gimp, kompozer (for working
>      with HTML tables), jedit for working with HTML/CSS, thunderbird,
>      rapidsvn, unison (for sync result to the productional server),
>      openoffice (for reading original documents from customers),
>      freemind, multiple browsers for testing (opera, firefox,  
> konqueror
>      for webkit etc) and even accounting software to account her time
>      on the project. How can she customizing, reshaping or recombining
>      services?
>
> I know etoile probably could not deliver everything needed now to
> optimize these workflows, especially when most software are not  
> based on
> GNUStep for users to integrate. But if the project can present the
> public an "image", that how things gonna be, it would bring a lot of
> interest from people to the project, creating community that make this
> happen. Thus if we have clear ideas how we gonna do, how the  
> difference
> users would feel if they start to use etoile (with example scenario  
> like
> I gave above), then we gain support. How do you think?
>
> And can you paint a picture based on some scenario how Etoile  
> evolves to be?
>
> Thanks
> Zhang Weiwu
> Beijing, China.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Etoile-discuss mailing list
> Etoile-discuss@...
> https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-discuss

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[etoile-3]

> I know etoile probably could not deliver everything needed now to
> optimize these workflows, especially when most software are not  
> based on
> GNUStep for users to integrate. But if the project can present the
> public an "image", that how things gonna be, it would bring a lot of
> interest from people to the project, creating community that make this
> happen. Thus if we have clear ideas how we gonna do, how the  
> difference
> users would feel if they start to use etoile (with example scenario  
> like
> I gave above), then we gain support. How do you think?
>
> And can you paint a picture based on some scenario how Etoile  
> evolves to be?

As you mentioned, Etoile, at this point, definitely doesn't have  
everything needed to help people like the above users. We have  
infrastructure in place to start to allow for these things, but  
building the actual services, as well as the remaining infrastructure,  
will take some time.

To explain the ideas a bit more, here are some of my thoughts on what  
Etoile will eventually look like.


SERVICES
---------------------------------
One way to think about the services is that developers will no longer  
have to build massive, monolithic applications. What the Unix  
philosophy advocates in building single command-line applications that  
do one thing well and allow information to be piped through them,  
Etoile hopes to do for the desktop. This is a really good model for  
open source development as well, in that developers don't have to get  
up to speed on a full code base in order to contribute to an  
application. They can just write what amount to "plug-ins", specifying  
what types of documents can be input and output, and then dealing with  
only the specifics of what their service does to the data in between,  
whether that's transforming it or displaying it in some fashion.

The advantages for users are also many. Users aren't tied to a full  
application -- they can pick and choose the services they need, and  
can easily swap in better ones as they are created. In many ways, this  
is similar to the model used on the iPhone for its applications,  
particularly for things like Twitter where you have a standard API and  
all the apps just follow that model. In this way, the user can build a  
workflow around the services that they like the best from a competing  
arena of similar services (just as iPhone users can pick the Twitter  
app they like best from a whole host of similar apps).

Users can have a single service for a single purpose across all types  
of documents. This is contrary to the current software world, where  
there is an excessive amount of redundancy. For example, today, many  
traditional applications end up recreating the "Save as..." dialog box  
or the Font picker or a menu of Drawing tools. In Etoile, a user will  
have one such service, the one that they consider the best for their  
particular needs, and they will have to learn only that particular  
service's functionality.

As an additional user benefit, users will save memory by not having to  
hold a huge program in memory all the time. From my experience, I know  
that I only use a very small percentage of all the features in an app  
like Illustrator, Photoshop or Word, and so opening up only the  
services I was actually using would be a big benefit, and would  
probably make my machine feel much more responsive (or, alternatively,  
would allow Etoile to run on more limited hardware).


PROJECTS
---------------------------------
Outside of services, we have the concept of Projects which will assist  
with workflows. To use your scenario of the web designer (which I  
personally am, so I am intimately familiar with the process), if I  
wanted to update a website using the traditional desktop model, I  
would have to open up a variety of applications and documents: a  
browser (or two or three), a local server admin panel, an FTP client,  
a text editor, an image editor, a database client, maybe a terminal,  
etc, etc. And I would have to do this every time I need to make edits  
to the site I was working on. With the Etoile model, I would open up  
the documents associated with those functions just once and keep them  
running in the Project I've associated with the site. Then, every time  
I need to make a change to the site, I just reopen the Project and all  
my apps and documents are there exactly where I left them. Think of a  
Project like a combination of a folder, a virtual desktop and a  
virtual machine image and you have the general idea. This is a major  
source of the power behind the Etoile model, and will most definitely  
save users time in their work.


OBJECT BROWSER
---------------------------------
Etoile will also feature a "file" browser/manager that itself will be  
pluggable with new services. The documents listed in such a browser  
will be the actual live documents, not just an iconic representation.  
Because of this, any browser can instantly become a music/movie  
playlist and media player, a photo manager, an FTP/SCM client, a  
source code project browser, and more. Additionally, because the  
documents are "live", users can edit them in place, merely by clicking  
on them to activate them then scaling them to the appropriate size  
(see http://jesseross.com/clients/etoile/ui/flash/200902/ for an  
example of scaling and activating).


SHELF
---------------------------------
Copy and paste will no longer be a single item, destructive process.  
Objects can be "picked up" (copied) from anywhere and  
"dropped" (pasted) into a Shelf, which allows them to be stored for  
easy reuse in other documents. This aids in the workflow by keeping  
frequently used objects (like an avatar icon or snippets of text/code)  
in a single quickly accessible location. It may also be possible to  
assign key commands to items in the shelf to have them dropped  
somewhere when the key command is triggered.



I am sure there are many more examples of how a user's workflow is  
eased by using Etoile. I'll let some of the other devs pipe in with  
their ideas if they feel the need or want to elaborate on any of my  
thoughts.


I hope that helps -- let me know if you have any other questions.


J.



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[Zhang Weiwu]

Jesse Ross wrote:
> To explain the ideas a bit more, here are some of my thoughts on what  
> Etoile will eventually look like.
>  

Can somebody sketch it? A picture worth a thousand words, a picture also
shows the team has something clearly rooted in mind. During our
commercial software development the sketched user interfaces and
screenshots made with tools like GIMP are important tools for
communicating new ideas.

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[etoile-3]

> Can somebody sketch it? A picture worth a thousand words, a picture  
> also
> shows the team has something clearly rooted in mind. During our
> commercial software development the sketched user interfaces and
> screenshots made with tools like GIMP are important tools for
> communicating new ideas.

These are a couple of years old, but much of it is still applicable.  
Take a look:

http://jesseross.com/blog/2007/04/18/more-etoile-mockups/


J.



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