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From: rjc@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: De-macification of the Amiga (Re: The Amiga's Future)
Keywords: Drag-and-drop, application start, programm changes
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.162803.5664@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 24 Jun 91 16:28:03 GMT
References: <96@ryptyde.UUCP> <1991Jun23.145847.16816@Sugar.NeoSoft.com> <111@ryptyde.UUCP>
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In article <111@ryptyde.UUCP> dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy) writes:
>Responding to the following:
>
>"No. I suppose you could use a kludge to give the appearance of having them
>do this. Personally, I'd rather not install such a prop and force application
>programmers to update their code. The fewer kludges added in the name of
>backwards compatibility the better... that's the philosophy that's held the
>Mac back so badly."
>
>Excuse me? Are you flaming Apple for being able to do something Commodore
>couldn't? That is, cause applications to open documents by double-clicking
>on them even if the app is running, without apps having to be rewritten?
>There is no "appearance" of them having done this. What do you mean?
>Holography? :)  That's just it, the Workbench way DOES force programmers
>to update their code, while Apple's doesn't. What's the disadvantage?
>What is your point, if you have one?

  You don't know what you're talking about. The Workbench way doesn't
force anything. What Peter was trying to say is, C= could add some
workarounds in the OS (The Apple way a.k.a. kludge) to make new
stuff work, however Peter doesn't want this to happen.
Instead, Peter wants Workbench to provide new functionality and have the
Apps upgrade to use it, rather than have the OS exert a placebo on the
App tricking it into using a new feature without its knowledge.
In 2.0 new features have been added to the OS (I'm not sure) that allow
you to open windows that allow you to drop icons into them and have
applications notified.(AppWindows?)  Drag-an-drop launching of programs
have nothing to do with the App at all, it's something the OS does for
you.

  A good example of this is Apple's bubble-help system. What if Apple
decided to somehow make bubble-help work on Apps that didn't support it
(I have no idea how they would do this, perhaps they would review the
manual information for every application ever written on the Mac
and include it on the system 7 disk) Instead of this god-awful kludge,
System 7 Apps have to upgrade to use this ability.

  Peter would rather have software updates instead of backward
compatible baggage in the OS depending on how much code it took and
what sacrifices were made. (I hope I represented yor view here Peter)

  The Amiga OS is open and dynamic, however when no previous interface
existed to certain features, an upgrade is a must. (E.g. balloon help,
quicktime on Mac) IBM could get a DIG library in BIOS tommorow, however
no programs would take advantage of this since the interface to these
routines weren't there before.

 I've said this all before, sometimes upgrades are required to take 
advantage of new features that had no previous calling interface.
Sometimes you must also sacrifice some backwards compatibility to
advance your design (and sometimes it is not possible because of the
market, like MS-DOS)

--
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