Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!cbnewsm!nsw
From: nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Hooks and ladders
Message-ID: <6906@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 Nov 89 08:28:02 GMT
References: <128072@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock)
Organization: The Flying Squid Patrol
Lines: 65

In article <128072@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
[ ... ]
>But what struck me was that what I would *really* like to do would be to
>have ready access to resident programs. [You know the ones with a shared
>text segment so that you don't have to have a copy in the ram disk and a
>copy executing when you run them.] Now it seems a wee bit silly to have 
>a resident icon, but I thought "Why not?" Can we make a workbench accessible
>user interface to the list of Resident programs? Any ideas on what it
>should look like? Generally resident programs are for the CLI environment
>and don't know about WB parameter passing, would it help to have some sort
>of notification on the resident command ? I was thinking that if you dragged
>a tool icon out of it's disk drawer window and onto the backdrop that should
>make it resident. Then you could just click on it and go. Comments? Ideas?

Unfortunately, I'm not privy to what's going on in the 1.4 Workbench, so
it's hard to fold any ideas into what's already there.  I like your idea
of just dragging an icon onto the desktop to make it resident, but I don't
know how that will interact with 1.4's iconification feature.  My guess
(for what it's worth) would be that iconified programs would go on the 
backdrop.  So how would you tell the difference between a REZed (I use REZ)
program and an iconified program?  Would it even be necessary to tell the
difference?  What if someone iconifies a REZed program?  OOOF!

OK, how about this for the "ultimate" REZ implementation.  I don't know how
feasible it would be, but here goes anyway.  You create a resident.device.  
This would have an icon on the workbench, ala RAM:.  To make something 
resident, you would drag its icon from it's window to the RESIDENT: window.  
To make a CLI program resident, you'd just copy it to RESIDENT:.  If RESIDENT: 
gets a file without an associated .info file, it creates a default icon for 
it in the window (since 1.4 will do this, we'd want to be consistent).  If a 
.info file is copied into RESIDENT:, then it will only be accepted if there's
already a program with the same name in RESIDENT: (I'm a little shaky on this
part).  So, if you wanted to move stuff into the RESIDENT: window in your 
startup-sequence, you could just do "copy foo foo.info to RESIDENT:" and 
everything would work like you'd expect.  To summarize, RESIDENT: would 
operate almost identically to RAM:, except you'd get that shared text segment
operation.

Note that you'd probably (though not necessarily) want RESIDENT: to provide a
file system-like interface, though it would presumably not support 
subdirectories.  That way, if I wanted to remove something from RESIDENT:, 
I could do "delete RESIDENT:foo", etc. etc.

To actually run resident programs from the Workbench, you'd double click the 
icons in the RESIDENT: window.  To get the CLI usage, you'd just put
RESIDENT: as the first thing in your path.

It seems to me that this would be much more consistent with the rest of the
system than the current REZing schemes, which seem to be very "special-case"ish.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about device drivers or AmigaDOS to try 
doing this, but I can't see why it couldn't be done under 1.3 by some 
enterprising individual, barring Unforeseen Technical Unfeasibility [TM].

One *disadvantage* to this scheme from the user's standpoint is that he/she's
gotta keep that RESIDENT: window around, cluttering up the screen.  Oh well,
I guess these programs could always be put in a Workbench menu if it was
undesirable to waste that space on Workbench.

Comments?

    ________________    __________________    ____________________________
////                \\//                  \\//                            \\\\
\\\\ Neil Weinstock //\\ att!cord!nsw  or //\\ "Oh dear, now I shall have ////
//// AT&T Bell Labs \\// nsw@cord.att.com \\//  to create more Martians." \\\\
\\\\________________//\\__________________//\\____________________________////