Now imagine such an application. 256 × 192 pixel art. Top 32 pixels taken for UI. Environment like an old RPG game. There are objects there of various sort. Anything, really: you draw your own room. There are little robots walking around.
The source of the room is a raster graphic file with two layers: one is the pixel art that is shown, the other has zones of different colours. Say, I have a room with a chair, a chest and a decorative potted plant (a cactus, maybe). On the second layer, I colour them in #a00, #0a0 and #00a, leaving other pixels empty.
And somewhere there's a script that says:
#a00 is resting-place for robot(1).
#0a0 is obstacle; on click move robot(1) to #0a0; on click shell { rsync -avz ~/data.txt me@server:~/data.txt }.
#00a is obstacle.
Most of the time, the robot just hangs around the chair. When I click the chest, though, it hurries there and the script is run.
It's like that little game engine we had a jam about. That did happen, right? Was it called Flick? Not sure. So, it's basically that + HyperCard + little robots walking around.
Actually, why reserve space for UI? Draw your own UI. Full 256 × 192 pixel rooms. Every room is a window, arrange them as needed.
Many funny ideas can be thought of. Files shown as books on a bookshelf. Cron integration (a clock). Self-modifying pictures. Computing made fun again!