Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!jade!eris!mwm From: mwm@eris.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: problems with the amiga user interface... (really Suntools) Message-ID: <2867@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Fri, 20-Mar-87 08:52:16 EST Article-I.D.: jade.2867 Posted: Fri Mar 20 08:52:16 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 22-Mar-87 16:38:38 EST References: <50@mit-prep.ARPA> <3500003@nucsrl.UUCP> <2811@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <444@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (No one lives forever.) Meyer) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 75 In article <444@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> lrj@batcomputer.UUCP (Lewis R. Jansen) writes: >In article <2811@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (No one lives forever.) Meyer) writes: >>There's no way to close windows without going through menus. > > Try again. The L7 key toggles whether a window is closed or > not. Hit L7 on an open window, and *POOF* it closes. Also, > the L5 key places the 'top' window on the bottom of the stack. > VERY nice for 'moving' from one window to another to another > without reaching for the mouse; just have the windows slightly > overlapping, and the mouse arrow sitting in that overlap area. I know all about the L5 and L7 keys, and use them a _lot_. L7 doesn't CLOSE the window, it ICONIFIES it. I wanted to use Intuition-ish terminology, so chose the thing closest to "quit" under intuition. This lead to much confusion, for which I apologize. > I have no idea what "bucky bits" are -- Bucky Bits started life as bits over & above the shift and control keys: meta, hyper, super, etc (yes, there are keyboards with these creatures on them). When refering to rodents, I use that term to mean ANY keys on the keyboard that must be held down when the mouse button is clicked. It should be noted that LISPMs are going to bucky bits instead of chord'ed mouse buttons or multi-clicks ("Gee, you mean quadruple-left-mouse isn't bound anymore?" "Right, it's been replaced by hyper-meta-cokebottle-left.") > In any case, it looks like you're given the source to > Suntools. I hate to say it, but if it does bother you that > much, you at least have the ability to CHANGE thet part you > dislike. I haven't tried to actually make a new copy of > suntools, however. Gag! I fully intend to write a window manager one of these days. If I could figure out how to replace intuition, I'd do it for the Amiga. Failing that, I'm either going to do it for X V11 (which will have the hooks to do what I want), or NeWS (when/if we get it). > So imlement NeWS on the Amiga, and then put X on top of it. > Best of both worlds. :^) Yeah, but the result wouldn't be as close to what I'd like as Intuition (at least now that I have a copy of AutoPoint). > I haven't seen X in action yet, but i have seen NeWS on a > Sun 3/160 -- neat stuff. (no X vs. NeWS wars here!) X should be seen on uVAXen, not Suns. The Sun version has some serious performance problems. NeWS on a Sun 2 is supposed to be snappier than Sunstools on a Sun 3. I can't wait to see that. Finally, Mitsu mentioned that Unix window managers tend to be dogs, based on his experience with Suntools. He's right, Suntools is a dog (anything which can't open 6 windows on a 4Meg machine without swapping has _real_ problems). The major competition (NeWS and X) isn't nearly as bad. Both of them work by having a server that you send messages to so it will do things for you. NeWS even has light-weight processes (read "tasks") in the server. Mouse events are interrupts, and spawn new tasks in NeWS. Performance should be much better. If nothing else, emulate the intuition/input device running at priority on AmigaDOS by niceing your application. Of course, all this stuff has to be done in spite of Unix. I leave the thought of how something like this will work on the Amiga up to you.... [X won't work: 300K for the server + 100K for each terminal window. But they're nice terminal windows, with scroll bars to go over the history, and etc......]