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From: cortesi@informix.com (David Cortesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NOT (click to type) in NeXTStep?
Message-ID: <1990Nov6.221820.17987@informix.com>
Date: 6 Nov 90 22:18:20 GMT
References: <1990Oct28.165341.6949@cs.cmu.edu> <1990Nov6.075856.3596@engin.umich.edu>
Sender: news@informix.com (Usenet News)
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.
Lines: 47

In article <1990Nov6.075856.3596@engin.umich.edu> cerberus@caen.engin.umich.edu (R Eric Bennett) writes:
>In article <1990Oct28.165341.6949@cs.cmu.edu> cap+@cs.cmu.edu (Chris Paris) writes:
>>I find it interesting that in this group people almost universally prefer
>>NeXTStep to X.
>
>It's funny to hear that someone actually LIKES move to focus.

It's always funny (or interesting) to find out that other people's
tastes are different than our own, isn't it?  Now if we can just remember
that that's normal, not evidence of moral turpitude or a congenital
brain defect...

My experiences are based on regular, repeated moves between SunView, Mac,
and NextStep, with occasional forays into Motif.  Every one of them
cramps my style a different way.  Here are three ways that NextStep
definitely impedes my "power user" fingers:

1) No way to send a window to the back.  If you completely cover a
window, the only way to get at it is to iconize everything in front
of it.  Yes, I know about double-clicking the application's icon in
the dock -- but some are not in the dock, the dock is not always visible,
and besides, the things that most often are covered up are Stuart windows
by other Stuart windows -- so clicking on the Stuart icon is no help.
(and Stuart's "activate" menu contains 4 or 5 nearly-identical names)

It wasn't until I'd used NextStep a while that I appreciated how often
I had used SunView's "back" function.

2) No way to use a window without bringing it to the front.  I found
many good uses for the SunView ability to interact with a window that
was partly obscured by other windows.  Often you don't *need* to see
a window in its full rectangularity; only one corner or the top or
bottom edge.  The good thing is not that you can type into a window by
pointing at it; it's that you can type into a window without having 
to bring it to the front, covering up the window you are interested in.

3) Click-to-activate can cause scrolling: if you want only to activate
a window, and only its left edge is showing, you will also cause a
scroll action when you click on it.  This is true of Edit and Stuart
and probably others.  Which means that bringing a mostly-covered
window to the front can require very careful aim to hit just that
tiny visible corner of the title bar or bottom frame.
-- 

///////   /     David Cortesi            /////// cortesi@informix.com //////
//////   //                              //                               //
////  / ///     Informix Software        //   Tough times never last,     //