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From: jimm@amiga.UUCP (James D. Mackraz)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Easy of programming, Mac, Amiga
Message-ID: <1564@amiga.amiga.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 19:08:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: amiga.1564
Posted: Fri Sep 19 19:08:46 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Sep-86 18:45:10 EDT
References: <8609152222.AA23166@cory.Berkeley.EDU> <193@zen.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: jimm@homer.UUCP (Jim Mackraz)
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Inc., 983 University Ave #D, Los Gatos CA 95030
Lines: 46

In article <193@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> c160-aw@zooey.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Christian Wiedmann) writes:
>My opinion in this already belabored subject is that the key issue is not
>the interface to the programmer, but the interface to the user. Both the
>Amiga and the Mac support a mouse and windowing. What the Amiga lacks is
>a clearly defined User Interface. When I sit down with a Mac program, I
>expect to be able to use it without reading the manual. From what I've seen
>and heard about Amiga software, this is less true for the Amiga. The reason
>the Mac is hard to program is because of all the requirements made by Apple.
>There is no question, though, that the Amiga hardware is better than the
>Mac's. Now if only Commodore were Apple...
>
>		    -Christian
>
>These views are the definitive views of this Universe.

If an application ascribes to the suggested guidelines (e.g., Project and
Edit menus, and so on) for standard Amiga user-interfaces, a simple application
(or simple functions of a complicated application) can be operated by
an untrained user.  What a system designer has to avoid, while providing this
commonality, is a "user-interface funnel," through which all applications have
to operate the same.

On the Amiga, there are, for example, system standard dialog boxes (yes/no)
called AutoRequests.  They operated identically, and when they were enhanced
in the system to respond to keystrokes, all programs using them benefited.
But you can get in at a much lower level than that and do much more with
the concept.  Likewise, you needn't handle window sizing as simple as
the Byte article describes.

There are other examples where Intuition provides simple, standard methods
as the default (menu operations) but provides great flexibility, at the
discretion of the programmer.

Try out the controls to the public-domain Triclops Invasion, or use the
"fast menu" of Aegis Images or Animator, and see how one can slightly enhance
the interaction suitable to the application, or toss it out completely
and do things that no Amiga (or Mac) designer had dreamed of.

It seems more and more that mac-lovers flaming the amiga have heard more
than they have seen, or perhaps never written a desk accessory and had
to live with bs quasi-tasking and a single threaded dos.

There is more to application programmer power than windows and scroll bars.
Try it, you'll like it.

				jimm