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From: ralph@mit-atrp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Managing daemons and iconification
Message-ID: <1318@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29-Jun-87 10:53:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-amt.1318
Posted: Mon Jun 29 10:53:51 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Jun-87 04:17:40 EDT
References: <4074@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <1443@xanth.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: ralph@ATRP.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Amiga-Man)
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Organization: MIT Amiga Users Group
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In article <1443@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>
>For the particular case of a bunch of workbench programms lurking in the
>background with no visible screen representation, I'd rather have one
>RSLclock sized window for the commodities broker, with one  dynamic menu of
>all the programs available for call, by name, than to have to remember all
>the (possibly mutable) hot-key combos to call them up.  Guess the brain
>cells are just getting a bit soggy with age, but ...
>
>Other's comments?
>
>Kent.
>
I agree with this idea, since I'm one of the few(?) folks who does as
much as possible from the workbench and the mouse. While we're on this
subject I have an additional idea I'd like to toss out.

Background:
I just started using U-edit. This guy will turn into a tiny little window
on the workbench when you left-click in it's menu bar. Then, to restart
it you just click in the little window.

Suggestion:
The workbench should support this automatically. It should use a normal icon
just like all the rest of the icons.

Incredible Idea:
And to make the whole thing work smooth (this is the point of the Workbench..?)
you should be able to shift select some other file (via icon) and then
reactivate your iconified program and have that file name passed to it just
like it normally happens when you start programs(when properly designed)
from the workbench. I'm the kind of guy who likes icons and gets annoyed
when I start my favorite icon'ed program and it hands me a *text* based
file requestor. Ouch !

Realization:
This is similar to what the old "resident" command was supposed to do.
Now instead of having my editor (or whatever) on my ram disk and loading
another copy to executing memory to run it, I just start it at boot time
and keep it running, iconifying when not needed.

Additional Point:
U-edit, when iconified, releases it's chip ram for it's screen when it's
iconified. It also runs background tasks to cleanup up it's buffers,
so it runs very smoothly. And, it also can be told to close its workbench
window and open it's own screen, *without* stopping execution or unloading
edit buffers. Wow !

Conclusion:
I think we're beginning to see the some really new and fantastic ideas
for user-interface coming together.

Thanks for your ears....err...eyes.
                                    Ralph