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From: cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How to improve Workbench 2.0!
Message-ID: <16246@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 91 22:10:45 GMT
References: <1991Jan27.105252.7019@marlin.jcu.edu.au> <1991Jan27.135843.2056@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <7663@sugar.hackercorp.com> <813@cbmger.UUCP>
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Reply-To: cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland)
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>>>   Nobody wants to know about assign?!?!? I SURE DO! it is easy to
>>> add an assign to the system. "1> assign name: path/file" How much
>>> easier can it get?
>>
>>A workbench assign tool would be nice. Sounds like a good PD program now
>>there's a decent "system" interface.
>
>(It's obviously the day of BIG WB menus :-)
>So you want to click on a certain drawer (or file) and then invoke
>a menu item (in the "Icons" WB menu) named perhaps "Assign" and then
>a string requester opens where you can assign a name to this? Is this
>what you want? Like with that other posting I replied today already,
>this sounds not at all difficult. But is it really needed?
>
I think it would be a good thing to make ASSIGNs pitifully easy.
Lots of commercial software requires one to four ASSIGNs to be
entered in the startup-sequence.  Not difficult to us, but we're
not selling to ourselves; we already have Amigas.  I worked
selling Amigas for some time and this has been my experience
there as well as with computer-illiterate friends.

The startup-sequence is a scary thing, particularly as it's
split into startup-sequence and startupII.  It's an invisible
file  (from a Workbench standpoint)  in an invisible directory
with a name that implies that you'll destroy your computer if
you mess it up.  You can put things in the wrong place, misspell
words, and other errors that will prevent your machine from
booting.  Not a problem to us, but a serious one to the novice
who wants to have a nice, menu-driven DTP package.  Such people
find their first interaction with the easy to use Amiga being
working with "ED" typing cryptic words verbatim into a mystery
file and courting serious disaster.  Third party install scripts
are notoriously poor.  

It was my hope that an icon-linked file of ASSIGN statements
could be dragged into the WBStartup drawer under 2.0, thus
enabling ASSIGNs to be made without getting into the threatening
areas of the system.  Is this true?

I think that there should be some ridiculously easy way to
add ASSIGNs permanently to the startup, through some self-
explanatory requestor or phenomenally simple graphical
mechanism like icon-dragging or menu-using.  We must not
forget how much of the market is somewhat scared of computers.


-- 
   //  / Thom Cleland                       / It is easier        /
  //  / tcleland@ucsd.edu                  / to get forgiveness  /
\X/  / ASOCC * Amiga Users' Group at UCSD / than permission...  /
     \____________________________________\____________________/