Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!peter From: peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench) Message-ID: <772@nuchat.UUCP> Date: 11 Mar 88 01:41:59 GMT References: <318@jc3b21.UUCP> <329@jc3b21.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx Lines: 79 Summary: tooting my own horn. In article <329@jc3b21.UUCP>, fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) writes: > Does Workbench offer anything that isn't available in the CLI (besides the > "point and click" mode of operation)? You mean apart from a much cleaner and better documented method of starting programs up? > In the CLI text that scrolls off the screen is lost. The fix for this is a better console driver. > (1) Workbench doesn't show all the files on a disk. I think this is > Workbench's most serious defect. So use Browser. Version 1.3 is public domain. > Of course, some of > those commands weren't designed to work with Workbench. They need a console > window for I/O. We don't want Workbench to automatically open a console > window everytime we run a program, though. Also, we need some way to pass > parameters to the commands. It's a lot more complex than this. Have a look in the RKM and the AmigaDOS manual. The environments are radically different. > It's not too hard to pass file names as parameters. Just drag them to the > program and drop them. Extended selection would allow passing more than one > file to a program. That would be a better interface, but Workbench (and Browser) already support this with the shift-double-click procedure. You select all the files holding down the shift key after you select the first one, then (still holding down the shift key) you double-click the program you want to launch. Browser also allows you to put a program into a menu... > (1) Forget options. If you want something other than the defaults use > the CLI. This one's simple but you lose the advantage of being > able to point to the files you want. I'm working on this in Browser 2.0. If you try to launch a CLI program it puts up a string gadget and lets you edit the command line. You can also use the "info" selection in the workbench to modify the default behaviour of properly behaved tools, but modifying the file's "ToolTypes" array. > (2) Put an alphabet of letter icons on the screen. > (3) Have a "Set options" item on the menu. Not practical. There's no place in the startup message to put them. > (4) Workbench doesn't have the CLI's provisions for I/O redirection. Programs started under the Workbench don't have stdin and stdout at all, and I'm not sure there's any way of handling that. > (5) Workbench doesn't have a default console window for standard input, > standard output, and standard error. See above. > (6) Workbench doesn't handle wildcards in filenames. Browser 2.0 will have menu items for "Select all" and "Select matching". > (7) It isn't easy to run a program against a file in a different > directory. No problem. Just open both windows and shift-double-click. > (9) You can't terminate Workbench when you are through with it. You > have to reboot. Why would you want to? -- -- a clone of Peter (have you hugged your wolf today) da Silva `-_-' -- normally ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter U -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.