Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!src.honeywell.com!msi.umn.edu!noc.MR.NET!gacvx2.gac.edu!scott From: scott@next-5.gac.edu (Scott Hess) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Polished details in 2.0 utilities? Message-ID: Date: 29 Nov 90 18:20:15 GMT References: <1990Nov29.015347.24007@agate.berkeley.edu> Organization: Gustavus Adolphus College Lines: 67 Nntp-Posting-Host: next-5.gac.edu In-reply-to: dwallach@soda.Berkeley.EDU's message of 29 Nov 90 01:53:47 GMTLines: 67 In article <1990Nov29.015347.24007@agate.berkeley.edu> dwallach@soda.Berkeley.EDU (Dan Wallach) writes: In Terminal, you can change some of the defaults for a current window (like font) and have them reflected immediately. You can change other things (like reversevideo) and they won't do anything until you open a new window (but you still get the original font, not the changed one). Does this sound right to you? Under one of the menus (maybe the one with font controls in it) you can ask for page layout, and can select page dimensions and all this other great stuff. You select it, say "Ok" and nothing happens. Sure, none of this makes much sense for a terminal program, but then why have it in there? Well, theone set of stuff is Preferences, which has come to mean Defaults in the NeXT world at large. That means that it modifies the defaults database, and thus doesn't affect the current status of the program. Page Layout is for printing only. I found that running many of the ApplicationPrograms (AllWithFunnyNames) from the terminal would tend to give me lots of lines of garbage relating to not being able to find this that or the other class. The program would then pop up as usual. Is this normal behavior? Also, if I just ran the program without backgrounding it, and went back to the terminal, I couldn't ^C the program (it just printed ^C) and I had to ^\ it to make it go away. You cannot ctrl-c break an app in 1.0, either. Presumably this is a feature. You can ctrl-z and ctrl-\ fine, because those are non-maskable. There appeared to be no way to ditch the click-to-focus nastiness in the Preferences thing. Can you get follow-focus (ala twm)? Couldn't before, why expect it now? Well, that's about it for half an hour of messing around. Don't get me wrong, though. I was solidly impressed with the machine. Interface Builder is a definite cool thing. I'm told Sun has such a thing brewing inside which is of the same caliber, but then anything that isn't finished yet is inheritently better than what's out :-) As a whole, I'm pretty impressed, but it's just all the nitty-gritty details, some of which work just fine in X, and some of which you wouldn't even consider doing in X, that concern me. Well, unless they are implementing an object-oriented library of stuff to implement the interface, I'm not waiting with bated breath :-) InterfaceBuilder is not the secret to NeXT's sucess, but is only a part of it. The keyboard feel is a little odd, but I guess you can get used to it. Well, I think you're the first person I've heard who doesn't want to buy one for their own computer as soon as they sit down at it. Now if only it had tilt feet. I think having the volume and brightness controls on the keyboard is awfully cute, but completely useless. You obviously don't have a custom system beep. Becomes quite conveinient when your crashin-beaker beep blows you through the wall :-) Well, maybe you aren't a current NeXT user? I'm not sure from your posting . . . -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer (Stuart) GAC Undergrad (Horrid. Simply Horrid. I mean the work!)