Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Standard File dialogs going away? (was Re: System 7.0)
Message-ID: <15169@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 22 Aug 89 21:21:14 GMT
References: <227700026@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <483@sunfs3.camex.uucp> <9173@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <13784@shamash.cdc.com> <490@sunfs3.camex.uucp> <2051@marvin.Solbourne.COM>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: ROM-clone project.
Lines: 49

In article <2051@marvin.Solbourne.COM> dce@Solbourne.com
	(David Elliott) writes:
>In article <490@sunfs3.camex.uucp> kent@sunfs3.UUCP (Kent Borg) writes:
>
>>Related note: Apple said at the devl. conf. that standard file dialogs
>>will eventually go away.  Not with 7.0, but some point later.
>
>Intriguing.  What exactly does this mean?
>
>I assume that SF dialogs will be replaced with something that is as
>standard and useful.  I can't believe that they would actually
>get rid of one of the few things that is really useful.
>
     The plan is to replace the present awkward, List-Manager-like
interface and all its hard to remember up-arrow, down-arrow,
option-command arcane command set with something which is faster and
more easy to use.  In place of the confusing multi-object dialog box,
there will be a simple one-line command window.  Volume names will be
done away with also, and in their place the user will be able to type
in easy-to-remember hard-coded single-character drive names.  In place
of the "Drive" button, users will have a simple, two-character command
that they can use to switch volumes and folders.  The programmer
interface will remain essentially the same for compatibility with
older programs, but programs will have to be recoded and recompiled to
take full advantage of new features of the expanded "SFCommand.Com"
object-oriented file fetch and stash routines.

     From the user interface end of things, one long-awaited feature
of the new file access protocol is that Apple plans to do away with
the Disk Initialization Package in favor of a new advanced "Abort,
retry, ignore?" disk error detection and correction scheme.

     Preliminary user interface tests show that for a highly skilled
typist who knows the exact location and name of every single file on
her hard disk, file access times using the new "SFCommand.Com" routine
are 500% to 800% faster than with the old SF{Get,Put}File suite.

     Apple plans to seed developers with beta versions of the entire
SFCommand package in late 1990, providing they can work out licensing
details with another company which claims proprietary rights to
certain key parts of the user interface.  If these delicate
negotiations should somehow go awry, look for another "Look and Feel"
suit sometime the following year.  The developer seed package is
scheduled to include the new stripped-down high-performance version of
the Communications Toolbox, tentatively named "Ansi.Sys."

     We now return you to your regularly scheduled questions.

Earle R. Horton