Crossing the streams (see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41217330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41217330>, and I know msephton has), task-centric

Crossing the streams (see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41217330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41217330>, and I know msephton has), task-centric UI seems to me to have traditionally been accomplished on Unix-like platforms through directories (often task/project-related), and Makefiles, which can combine a set of related operations across a large number of tools in a single context. Neither of these are, of course, user-friendly for the vast majority of people. But they do afford some thoughts, concepts, and mechanisms which might be used in task-oriented UI design.