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From: mas@ulysses.att.com (Michael A. Schoen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: a better solution??
Summary: how to solve the warping problem
Message-ID: <13082@ulysses.att.com>
Date: 8 Jun 90 13:45:24 GMT
Sender: netnews@ulysses.att.com
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 38

I believe that both sides of this argument have very strong points to make.

First, I am sure that there are applications for which warping pointer,
palettes, and windows are useful.  After all, the Macintosh, while it is
designed to be user-friendly, should not get in the way of doing things
efficiently.  In most cases, the friendly way is efficient enough -- pull-down
menu's do sacrifice time, but once the user is comfortable with the application,
command keys can be used.  Anyway, there should be a way for applications to 
utilize warping without getting rid of the friendliness.

Here is my answer: All applications should be designed to work without warping,
in any way.  Apple should create a cdev (separate from the control panel) that
would allow the user to enable warping in all of its forms.  In the future,
this cdev would be included with the system disks and fully documented in the
manual.  If the cdev were not placed in the system folder (as the docs would
reccomend to new users), then applications, checking for the cdev/init, would
see that the user had not enabled warping and would default to nowarp.  And if
it were enabled then the application would feel free to warp to its hearts
desire.
 
This idea would allow power users to warp and make it less likely that novices
would get confused.  If anyone is concerned that novices might enable the cdev
without reading any docs about it; a slight modification: since Apple probable
wouldn't like encouraging warping, someone could write a freeware version with
full docs.  It would be very simple - the values of enabling could just
be stored within itself (or a prefs file).  Once a standard freeware program
is reached (it shouldn't be to hard, since there aren't really any features;
but, for those who think that no standard warp cdev could be agreed upon,
all programs could use a "warp prefs" file, so that no matter what cdev is used,the applications would just look for warp prefs), software companies would just
have to check the prefs file.

Reactions??


Michael A. Schoen
ATT Bell Labs, Murry Hill   (provided for identification only)

mas@ulysses.homer.att.com