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From: john@viper.UUCP (John Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Better Windows?
Message-ID: <1003@viper.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-May-87 02:12:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: viper.1003
Posted: Mon May 18 02:12:25 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 18-May-87 06:43:50 EDT
References: <8705130929.AA17766@cogsci.berkeley.edu> <1987May14.125051.3647@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> <115@gecrd1.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@viper.UUCP (John Stanley)
Organization: DynaSoft Systems
Lines: 45
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.mac:3277 comp.sys.atari.st:3556 comp.windows.x:772

In article <115@gecrd1.UUCP> maciolek@gecrd1.UUCP (Mike Maciolek) writes:
 >
 >As any number of happy Amigans will be quick to point out, Intuition offers
 >-ALMOST- this very facility, AND avoids the one drawback: that there's no
 >obvious way to de-select an object once you've single-clicked on it.  (You
 >see, MOST of the time, when you single-click an icon, then decide "Nah, I
 >don't want THAT icon, I want THIS one", you want to be able to click on the
 >new choice and expect the old choice to go away.)

  Where's the "drawback" Mike?  As any number of happy ATARIans
will be quick to point out, Gem will also clear a previous 
selection when you click on a new one....  (Note exception below...)

 >The Intuition answer is that you hold down a SHIFT key while single-clicking
 >individual icons, thus telling Intuition "don't de-select the previous icon
 >when I click on the next; keep all the previously selected ones around."  I
 >find this especially useful when moving many files between drawers.

  This is exactly the same method Gem uses for multi-item selection.

  The point that the original poster was making had nothing to do
with -how- items are selected.  The point he (she?) was making was
that the people designing Gem have little to no imagination about
how to create a really flexable system...  If you click on one or
more files in a Gem folder-window and then double click on a program
icon, that program is run -period-.  The desktop throws away the
information about which files were highlighted...  The sensible
thing to have the interface do is to pass the program being run
the names of the highlighted files, but DRI never dreamed that the
users (gasp) might need any of the multi-file capability that the
desktop could embody and which, in fact, it does fully use for
its built-in utilitys...

  I know that DRI has control of the desktop code and would probably
never put something this potentialy useful into the system on their
own, but has Atari considered collecting a few of these ideas and
pointing out to DRI how they could make things much better with a
few very small changes?  The code to implement this particular change
is not very big and allows for some very nice possibilities that are
currently impossible and very frustrating...

--- 
John Stanley (john@viper.UUCP)
Software Consultant - DynaSoft Systems
UUCP: ...{amdahl,ihnp4,rutgers}!{meccts,dayton}!viper!john