Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!nosc!crash!pro-graphics.cts.com!bobl
From: bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: zip vs. other archivers
Message-ID: <576@crash.cts.com>
Date: 24 Oct 89 19:16:19 GMT
Sender: root@crash.cts.com
Lines: 55


 Network Comment: to #4612 by bagchi@sparky.eecs.umich.edu
 
>> I don't see why some industrious person couldn't take the zoo
>> source (it's PD isn't it?) and add a slick user interface
>> to it.  Any takers?
> 
> Gack. No...a thousand screams no...  Graphic-type interfaces are nice,
> without a doubt for an infrequently used program, that does a lot
> of stuff that needs complex settings.
> 
> However, archiving isn't one of them.  It really is the sorta thing that
> people do an awful lot of, if they do it at all.  And, for the most part,
> anyone who does BBS-or even more so-UNIX/netnews stuff, should have no
> problem with the CLI anyway.  You should know as well as I do that
> mixing keyboard and mouse-usage is a pain in the butt.
> 
> Not to mention that I never download a program with an icon.  Wastes
> disk space.
> 
> If you want an un-archiver, it really isn't all that hard to make
> an executable script, and use XICON on it.
 
Obviously you are a very biased person.  I hope you realize that there are
thousands of people out there who would *rather* use a completly mouse drive
interface to unarchive their ZOO archives.  It constantly amazes me how many
people there are out there that think if a person doesn't want to use the CLI
or doesn't know how to write an XICON script, they should give up computing.

You should realize that there is also a big push on for the A500 machine to be
sold to students.  In alot of cases this may be a person's first computer. 
Allowing them to call a local bbs, download a file and *easily* unarchive it
is desirable in my opinion.  Not everyone out there has your experience with a
computer.

I also doubt you have ever even seen the StuffIt program and how it works. It
is *completely* mouse driven and requires absolutely no keystrokes.  Your
assurtion that combining mouse and keyboard is valid, however, not in the case
of StuffIt for the Mac.

As a matter of fact, an associate of mine is currently working on such an
interface for ZOO and maybe he will include some other Archivers as well.

As a note, even though I have no problems with the shell, I find that using a
program such as DiskMaster 1.3 for filekeeping chores is much easier, faster
and more productive than banging away at the CLI.

-- Bob
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