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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!alberta!calgary!freedman
From: freedman@calgary.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Downside and Upside
Message-ID: <968@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Jun-87 17:18:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: vaxb.968
Posted: Fri Jun 12 17:18:38 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Jun-87 04:09:49 EDT
References: <8706111647.AA02770@hi-csc.uucp>
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 83

In article <8706111647.AA02770@hi-csc.uucp>, slocum@hi-csc.UUCP (Brett Slocum) writes:
> Dan Freedman writes: 
> > ... with "rm", you can remove a sysboot file, but with "dlf" you
> > can't.
> 
> First of all, you can delete a sysboot fil with 'dlf', you just need
> to change the type of the sysboot file from 'boot' to 'uasc' using
> 'obty'.  

You may consider this to be a feature, but I don't.  At the very least,
the force option (dlf -f) should remove any file including sysboots.
The documentation makes no mention of how to delete a sysboot file.

> > The area in which the cursor must be in order for you to type is
> > far too small. . . .  This is a fundamental flaw due to the
> > same cursor being used for both pointing and text insertion.
> 
> First, I have never had trouble hitting the 'next window' key to get
> to the input window.  I don't mind making one keystroke every now and
> then.  

Well, what you are saying is "I don't mind living with the problem now
and then".  I find it annoying to knock the mouse a fraction of an
inch and have to stop my typing in mid-word.  This is a problem on other
window systems too, but the typable area is much bigger, making inadvertant
mouse movements less critical.

> 
> > You can just barely use the system as a user without knowing
> > Aegis (until your processes need blasting)
> 
> 'kill' works just fine for killing processes, and 'kill -9' has taken
> care of the same things that 'sigp -blast' has, in my experience.  

Well, in my experience, kill does not get rid of everything, even when used
with the -9 option.  I'm surprised to hear you say that you have never had
a proccess that kill wouldn't kill.  There are many times when I have only
been able to get rid of a process by sigp -b'ing it.

> > ... ALL the keys ... self-repeating
> 
> I would probably spend half my time erasing extra characters, if they
> were all auto-repeat.  That's what the 'repeat' key is for.

Well, what you're saying here is, "just because the default is the way I like 
it, its ok that others are stuck with something they don't like".  I think that
what I said in my original posting is that the repeatibility of keys should be
at the discretion of the user.  If thats not what I said, that's what I meant
to say.

> > Serial ports do not seem to be accessable from any node except
> > the ones that they are connected to.
> 
> Remote processes can access sio lines.
> 
...But local ones cannot, yet they certainly can look at the directory in
which the sio ports reside.  They can ls or ld them, copy them, etc., but
they can't open them.  This is called non-transparency of the filesystem.

> > tabs
> 
> You can redefine the tab key to be a real tab.  See earlier message.
...but the DM doesn't like tabs, especially ones that are supposed to
be of standard (ie every 8 characters) size.

> 
> > DSEE ... certain "simple" things difficult (like moving a library
> > from one system to another).
> 
> I've moved many libraries between systems, use 'cpt'.
Well, bang goes the data abstraction when you have to do that. And
that was only one example.  There are some others, and unfortunately they
tend to be things that many users around here like to do often.


I don't know what your purpose was in posting a followup article like
that.  You seem to have taken the narrowest possible viewpoint in the
flimsiest possible context and found partial solutions to problems that
often were not the true subject of my posting.  My purpose in posting
this followup is to make available a reply to yours for those people not 
familiar enough with Apollos to be able to judge between our comments.

	Dan Freedman.