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From: tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Multiple Files and Standard File Package
Message-ID: <514@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 08:29:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-k.514
Posted: Tue Aug 27 08:29:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 20:53:55 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking
Lines: 30

Here's a subjective user interface question.  I'm developing an application
(TFTP) that transfers files across the Appletalk network.  If you're sending
a file from the Mac, you are queried via the Standard File Package as to
which file you want to send.  I was backing up some source files onto a VAX
by using TFTP (over the Seagate router), and it became obvious that there
should be some way you can select a group of files to be sent one after the
other.  The Standard File Package does not explicitly support this; you can
only select one file.

What is the best way of specifying a group of files?  The Megamax C linker
does it fairly well, with one window onto the disk directory and another
which accumulates files you've selected.  But this would be a fairly large
pain to implement, I think.  It would be better if some solution using the
Standard File Package could be implemented.  Additional dialog items can be
added to the get file dialog with relative ease, so this would seem like the
best way to go.  One way to do this would be to have two radio buttons at
the bottom, one marked "Last File" and one marked "Continue".  The initial
setting would be "Last File"; if the user clicked "Continue", then after
selecting a file, the dialog would come up again to get another file,
repeating until "Last File" was set.  The problem with this is that no list
of which files you've selected is shown.  Any suggestions for any easy way
to show a list of currently selected files would be appreciated.

Another problem is that this is really not the clearest way in the world to
do this.  Any other suggestions using the Standard File Package would be
appreciated.
-=-
Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking
ARPA:	Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K	uucp:	seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim
CompuServe:	74176,1360	audio:	shout "Hey, Tim!"