Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!imagine!pawl20.pawl.rpi.edu!jesup
From: jesup@pawl20.pawl.rpi.edu (Randell E. Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: New Assigns
Message-ID: <463@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Date: 4 Mar 88 06:59:55 GMT
References: <8802270215.AA06588@jade.berkeley.edu> <3414@cbmvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU
Reply-To: beowulf!lunge!jesup@steinmetz.UUCP
Organization: RPI Public Access Workstation Lab - Troy, NY
Lines: 32

In article <3414@cbmvax.UUCP> andy@cbmvax.UUCP (Andy Finkel) writes:
>Now, maybe what you actually mean is that we should have a device
>path and a library path.

>andy finkel		{ihnp4|seismo|allegra}!cbmvax!andy 

	This is certainly worth consideration.  For example, in the game
I'm porting, I've had to first try to open the arp.library, then if it fails
try to open it via a path (OpenLibrary("sub:libs/arp.library"...)).  The
ability to include a pathname to OpenLibrary (and probably OpenDevice)
calls is less than well-known.
	I'm not totally convinced it's needed for libraries, handlers, and
devices (yet), but I think I might be in the case of fonts.  It is quite a
pain to manage an immense font directory, especially if you want special-
purpose sets of fonts for different programs.  You could have OpenDiskFont
search FONTS: and all other assigns beginning with FONTS (eg FONTS2:,
FONTS_DPAINT:, etc).

	Maybe the rest of the answer (for fonts, at least) is to standardize
on a font requester, that allows you to select style, size, etc AND lets you
select what directory to look in them for (defaulting to FONTS:).  Witness
the problems with DPaint II and fonts.  They just modified it so it no longer
crashes if you have more than 17 fonts, now it only lets you select from the
first 17!  It should also let you ask to see what the current selection looks
like.

     //	Randell Jesup			      Lunge Software Development
    //	Dedicated Amiga Programmer            13 Frear Ave, Troy, NY 12180
 \\//	beowulf!lunge!jesup@steinmetz.UUCP    (518) 272-2942
  \/    (uunet!steinmetz!beowulf!lunge!jesup) BIX: rjesup

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