Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!ox.com!math.fu-berlin.de!fauern!unido!ztivax!athen!dhg
From: dhg@sinix.UUCP (David Griffith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Laziness
Message-ID: <1991May1.142136.19889@sinix.UUCP>
Date: 1 May 91 14:21:36 GMT
Organization: SNI AG Muenchen, STO XS
Lines: 40

I'm lazy. That's why I like the file browser in Workspace Manager. I
hate typing "cd, ls, cd... etc". But here's the problem: you've
browsed your way down a deep directory path and decided you want to
do something unixy with the files you see. So you'd like to launch
a terminal window at the current directory. But you can't! It's so
frustrating. New shells always start at your home directory again,
so you're back to some heavy typing to get where you want to be.

Now this is such an obvious requirement that I'm sure I'm missing
some easy way to do it. But I've searched TFM. And it would be so
easy to implement. You could just double click on a directory icon.
Last night I checked the Tools Inspector for directories, but no
luck. I tried dragging a directory icon over Terminal and over
Stuart. Still no luck. Anyone know how to do it?

On a related note, I was showing off the capabilities of IB to a
friend, adding buttons and sliders galore, and she commented "Yes
but it's all a bit shallow isn't it?". At first I brushed this
remark aside, but perhaps she has a point. Maybe we're all a 
little too hung up on interfaces and nib's. And there's a limit to 
the functional changes you can make to a given binary application.
For example, I like the BlastApp, but wanted to make it bigger. So
I used Simson Garfinkel's NibEdit programs to extract the nibs,
entered IB and enlarged the playing area. The program recognized
the increased width, but not the height. Then last night I decided
to try and add a file browser to the Terminal application to solve
my laziness problem. I failed. You can nib edit and interface build
to add a menu item to send a message to some object. But the object
needs new code and you can't re-link edit an executable file.

This is a real pity. It would be a great boost to the idea of object
orientated programming on the NeXT if the binary executables
somehow still contained relocation information thus allowing you
to add new functionality. Almost as good as source code! But then
maybe application developers don't like the idea of their applications
being ripped apart like some old car for spare parts...

Enough rambling.

Dave Griffiths