Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!eos!aurora!labrea!decwrl!sun!pepper!cmcmanis From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench) Message-ID: <43704@sun.uucp> Date: 1 Mar 88 22:39:52 GMT References: <318@jc3b21.UUCP> <1030@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> Sender: news@sun.uucp Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 93 In article <1030@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> (Dave White) writes: > Why not just have a menu item which when when selected would > display all the files on the current disk which don't have a .info file? The > program could allow the files to be selected, moved, etc - much like Peter's > Browser program (maybe a modified version of this program could be installed > on workbench?)... > Sorry if this is a stupid idea.... It's not a stupid idea, in fact there are many people who complain because you can't do exactly this. The question I have is, "What is the problem we are trying to solve?" There are a couple of things that have been bandied about in this forum since day one, and one of them was the 'all icons in a file' idea to speed up displaying and accessing files via icons. This works if your program wants to read or write a specific disk object, but seems to have problems when you want to read 'all' icons in a drawer. There doesn't seem to be the equivalent of GetFirstDiskObject(), GetNextDiskObject(). [If I am mistaken somebody please enlighten me since I need it for a program I have been writing] The other thing, has been making Workbench useful to the 'expert' user so that anything that the CLI can do, the workbench can do as well. This is somewhat more difficult although not impossible. Every user interface I have used has been based on an action -> (object | group) concept. The user is provided with a naming scheme (FILENAME.EXT in CP/M. Filename in the CLI, ICON in the workbench) and some way of specifying an action, like Copy, Type, Delete, or Rename. The Amiga's workbench uses sort of a 'reverse polish notation' in that you specify the object by clicking on it, and then specify the action. Usually the action is implied by some metaphorical action on the object such as moving it from one drawer to another, other times the action is explicitly defined by selecting a menu item such as 'Rename'. For new users this interface can be more 'intuitive' than typed commands. Where it falls down, as many have pointed out, is when there is an object that the user interface cannot name. And I contend that this is the problem we (in the editorial sense) would like to see solved. Some difficulty arises because AmigaDOS adopts a 'feature' of UNIX that is not as applicable as one might hope. And that is, that a file is a file is a file, and no one but the person using it knows what is in it. When it comes time to display these files with psuedo icons attached to them, it would really help to know just what the heck they were. Doug Fortunately, two types, IFF files and executables, are fairly easily recognized by the data in them. Text file and data files are not so easily spotted. So, the first thing on my suggestion/idea list is : o Provide some level of file type identification. This can be as simple as IFF/Binary/Text/Unknown (2 bits) to something more sophisticated. The other difficulty that the workbench faces is an incomplete implementation of the concept of a 'default' icon. The idea being that when you have a disk with no associated disk.info file, the workbench uses it's default disk icon, however when you have a tool there is no 'default' tool icon. Which leads to suggestion/idea number 2 : o Provide a default Icon for files of the above types, additionally a default 'drawer' icon should be available as well. The latter brings up the third difficulty in Workbench, which is the means provided for getting around the filesystem. If a directory has no icon associated with it, you can't look into it even if it contains icons. This can be eliminated by the use of default drawer icons. Of course there is a *lot* of stuff on the workbench floppy and having all these icons pop up could make a royal mess of the very limited space that is available. Therefore we need the following : o Provide a menu item to enable and disable the display of 'default' icons. The other reason this is beneficial is that if you do enhance the speed of icon lookup with an .icons file you can't cache the icons for files that don't have them. Displaying default icons will still be just as slow as the current system. Of course default icons always have the DEFAULTX, DEFAULTY co-ordinates and cannot be snapshotted. Finally the list of actions that are possible from the CLI but not the workbench need to be made available. Often additional menu items can provide this capability so the final suggestion would be : o Add menu items that include all of the actions one might associate with the CLI. So, the questions for the gallery are : o Did I miss any of your favorite gripes? o Do you see anything you *couldn't* do with a workbench like this? o Be aware that these changes encompass the Workbench, DOS, info.library and the Filesystem. Ta Ta for now... --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.