Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:15798 comp.windows.misc:522 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!apple!jrg From: jrg@Apple.COM (John R. Galloway) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.windows.misc Subject: DOS & MS-windows Vs. Unix & X experience + MS-windows Flame Keywords: MS-windows, DOS, Unix, X Message-ID: <10799@apple.Apple.Com> Date: 22 May 88 11:02:33 GMT Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA Lines: 144 background: I have been a Unix & X window user for about 2 years (unix under ISI's window system for about 6 months before that). The system I use (at home as a consultant) is an AT with a coprocessor on which I run Sys V.3 (from Opus Systems) and has a 19" high res mono display. I can also run DOS and hence MS-windows which also uses the high res display (from moniterm). Not being able to get my hands on good word processing under the Opus Unix sysetm (like interleaf, frame, etc.) I switched to MS-windows under dos for wp stuff. ** FLAME ON ** The overall experience of using MicroSoft Windows after Unix & X is one of complete disgust. This is a toy system. I have heard people comment on DOS that it seems like it was written by a few undergraduates for a not so well taught OS-101 class. Well those that did not pass the class must have decided to write MS-windows. Its user interface sucks, the environemt it supplies sucks. the whole thing has left me with a great desire to vomit on my keyboard. ** FLAME OFF ** Comments on Micro Soft Windows 2.1 POOR COMMAND INTERACE. Yes it is graphical, but only in that DOS like commands can be "typed" with the mouse. i.e. to delete a file your choices are: via mouse - click on the filename (optional) - click on the FILE pulldown menu - drag to the delete entry - get a dialogue box which has either an empty filename or if you have selected (by clicking on) the name of a file before pulling down the FILE menu, then that name is in the filename spot in the dialogue box. - edit the filename with cursor keys, etc. if needed - click on the OK (or perhpas it says YES) box via keyboard - type first letter of file until it is selected (optional) - ALT - F - D, now same dialogue box apperas - hit enter (enter is always the same has clicking on the highlited button, in this case the OK or YES button). Now correct me if I am wrong (as if you all need encourgement :-) but that does NOT seem shorter, or easier, or anything then just typeing "rm file" and is certainly not as easy or intuitive as grabbing the file with the mouse and hauling it off to the trash can. i.e. putting the command line commands into menus is not much of a graphical interface, its juts commands in menus. POOR APPLICATION ENVIRONENT. I am not too familiar with the worms eye view (from the application out) but the birds eye view (from the user in) is very sparse. You can put itmes in your startup file to say which applications you want started up and specify a few defaults like system wide border size and color but that is about it. The biggest hit seems to be a lack of position and size info (ala standard X geometry specs). So everytime you start up an application it uses its default size wich is usually the whole screen. The same holds true for all the rest of the resources/default values that you can specify in X, nothing like it exists in MS-windows. POOR WINDOW MANAGEMENT. One of the things I lke about the X uwm window manager (although many feel otherwise) is the use of keyboard and mouse combinations e.g. to move a window I need only be in the window and hit (with my .uwmrc file) ALT + right button to drag the window, ALT + middle to change its size, etc. All such items in MS-windows are based on being in a particular spot on the window (in the border to change its size, in the title to move it). Further there appears to be no way to move a window to the bottom of the desktop, which is a big missing item especially given that most applications seem to take have very large default windos that obscure everything else on the desktop. To see other applications you have to always resize or iconify. POOR DIALOGUE BOXES. There are a million (ok maybe only 20 or 30) dialogue boxes that keep poping up to ask "ARE YOU SURE?" and so on. This would not be so much of a pain if the box was positioned correctly so that the default button (the one highlited and clicked by hitting the enter key) was positioned under the mouse. Since the various dialogue boxes all seem to have fixed positions, this is never the case hence requireing much mouse movement. Again it is more of a command line interface put into windows then a window interface. I would suggest in the general area that any item in a menu that has subsequent dialogue boxes should be equiped with a command button off to one side of the menu button, but IN it. Then if I select print but am not within prints inner command button, it just prints. If I select print AND do so by being in the command button it goes through all the questions. Thus 90% of the time I need not pay for the hassel of going through options that I only need occaisionally. MICRSOFT WRITE. Any supposedly WYSIWYG window oriented editor that does not allow multiple rulers is a toy. enough said. FILENAME EXTENSIONS. MS-windows keys off of filename extensions to chose what application to run. Thus you can click on foo.wri which was written by MS-write to run MS-wite with foo.wri opened. Well it sounds good but the applications do not "see" files without their extensions. So for example if importing a raw text file into MS-write, you must name it with a .wri extension for MS-write to be able to open it. But the format is checked anyway and you are asked if you would like to convet it (more dialogue boxes). It all seems to be a very half baked idea, no maybe only a quarter baked. PRINTERS AND FONTS. A very anoying item is that the printer state is not maintained with documents. Hence if I setup for landscape mode under Excel and forget to change back when I print a document from MS-write it will come out in landscape mode. This is just silly. MicroSoft Excel by the way is a WONDERFUL program (though I hear it is much faster on the Mac). With regard to fonts, sigh, I could not afford a Apple Laserwriter II/NT so I got a HP Laserjet II. Then I got a font maker program called Glyphix that uses some sort of font definitions (same idea as adobe) and allows you to make downloadable Laserjet fonts (specifing line thickness, slant, one of four typefaces, point size, etc.). Then you take that down loadable font and run it through a MS-windos program (PCLPFM) that allows it to be used for printing by MS-windows programs. At this point editors are WYSIAWYG (..Almost..) as the font sizes are known and sentences end at the right word, but the screen fonts do not match the printer fonts. To get to this last step you need yet another utility that converts HP downloadable fonts into MS-windows screen fonts. Then you have a line for each font (note that helv 10pt portrait, helv 10pt landscape, helv 10pt portrait bold, helv 10 pt landscape bold.. are each a seperate font) in your statup file. The documentation on how all this works is very poor. MS-wirte does manyage to corretly use the right font when I specify boldness, but I just guessed at what I should call it and do not know what would happen if I had light, medium, and bold fonts rather than just two. This isn't seamless, the pieces are not even on the same table let alone stiched together. Perhaps a postscript printer would have made it all work. It also might have worked better if I just used HP font cartridges instead of soft fonts, but at about $300 per cartridge that each contain about 8 fonts (not 8 typefaces but 8 specific fonts (e.g. 10pt Roman bold), and $100 for the glyphix set there was not much choice (I got the Laserjet for price after all). Even if a good word processor was available (WinText from Palantir looks interesting though I am not sure I am up for putting more money into this project) the MS-windows environment and that of DOS has just done me in. I will stick to Unix and X for everything but using the Excel spread sheet and hope to later get a workstation that is supported by one of the good word processing products. Perhaps novice users find MS-windows appealing (I have been in computers for about 18 years now) but I VASTLY prefer the open, customizable, lots of connectable tools, environment of Unix and X (I think I would like some of the Mac and A/UX environments as well, though my mimimal Mac experience seems to indicate that Mac/OS has some of the same problems). Perhaps it was asking to much to think that MS-windows might make DOS an OK system, it does not. Some of the applications are very nice on the inside, but the world they live in is a slum. -- apple!jrg John R. Galloway, Jr. contract programmer, San Jose, Ca These are my views, not Apple's, I just get my mail here.