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From: page@ulowell.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: problems with the amiga user interface...
Message-ID: <1129@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Date: Wed, 11-Mar-87 12:31:09 EST
Article-I.D.: ulowell.1129
Posted: Wed Mar 11 12:31:09 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Mar-87 22:02:09 EST
References: <50@mit-prep.ARPA>
Reply-To: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell
Lines: 63

tmb@mit-prep.ARPA (Thomas M. Breuel) wrote in article <50@mit-prep.ARPA>:
Many observations about the Amiga interface.  Without starting any
religious wars, I'd like to comment on a few things he said.

>window activation and window re-arranging are not coupled in a useful way

Amen on this.

>should be standard keyboard equivalents for 'accept' and 'cancel' gadgets

V1.2 has these.  I think they are Amiga-V and Amiga-B ?  Maybe not...

>intuition (and the workbench) is unbelievably slow.  The fundamental
>problem may be the way Intuition has to compute internally which part of
>a window require refreshing, but this is just my guess.

I don't think it is Intuition (or Workbench).  Some time ago, Dale Luck
said if he had to do it all over again, he would rewrite the Layers library.
I think this is what you're seeing.

>string gadgets in requesters should become activated automatically

They *can* be, in V1.2 ... however, it's an application's descision.

>the standard font should be small enough to allow for 80 characters in a
>workbench window.  the collection of fonts provided with the system is poor.

True, although you can replace the standard font, and add as many new ones
as you like.  There are already hundreds of PD fonts for the Amiga.

>the printer drivers often do not support high-resolution graphics printing
>even if it is available.

Again, PD drivers are available to get you what you need.

>Unfortunately, many applications sacrifice quality and usability for [color]

Not the Amiga's fault.  Bitch at the application programmer.  Same with
printer aspect ratios.

Many of the other criticisms come from the Tripos (AmigaDOS) mentality
that Amiga had to accept when their planned DOS wasn't going to be
ready (legal hassles).  These include poor disk/filesystem performance,
poor support for control characters in command lines, resource tracking,
etc.  I have heard of a number of people say a new DOS for the Amiga
is in the works - one that will replace AmigaDOS, will look sort of like
UNIX, and will be much better integrated with the Amiga kernel.  That's
not to say there *is* such a beast -- just that I've heard people talk
about one.  We can only hope.

I'm not saying you should keep quiet about problems the Amiga has.  The
comment about windows/gadgets is one that I'd never heard before, and I
think it's an excellent idea.  I, for one, would like to see the layers
and intuition libraries changed so that windows can have different
colored backgrounds.  That way we can all do borderless windows and not
have the user confused.

It *is* important that when you blast the Amiga software, you aren't really
talking about an application programmer's design descisions.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page,  U of Lowell CS Dept.      ulowell!page,  page@ulowell.CSNET