Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: aliases and RUN Message-ID: <2993@sugar.uu.net> Date: 13 Nov 88 23:25:51 GMT References: <5230@louie.udel.EDU> <483@boing.UUCP> <2975@sugar.uu.net> <3792@tekigm2.TEK.COM> Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX Lines: 61 In article <3792@tekigm2.TEK.COM>, phils@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Philip E Staub) writes: > In article <2975@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > >In article <483@boing.UUCP>, dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck) writes: > > [Rewrite the CLI...] > >I'd say... dump the CLI completely. Switch to a workbench environment. > Why? Because the CLI programmer interface is inadequately documented, buggy, and a royal pain to use if you want to try to follow the rules. Even worse, it's infested with BPTRs. (I'm going to refer to this in the future... call this paragpraph "exhibit A") > I hope you're kidding about this one. One reason I bought an Amiga instead > of a Mac is that with the Amiga the icon oriented user interface is > optional for those applications where it is appropriate, while on the Mac it > is not. I didn't say change the user interface, just the programmer interface. As I went on to say... > >Now, you can still have shells and command line interpreters, but make them > >spawn programs in a workbench environment. > So now you have the overhead of Workbench even when all you wanted was > a CLI to begin with. What overhead? You don't need to have Workbench loaded to start a task and send it a workbench message. This is all documented in considerable detail in the manuals. It's a very clean environment. (This paragraph is my second global reference... call it "exhibit B") > I suppose you could make the same statement about > Workbench having to deal with CLI's overhead, but somehow I don't think > thats quite the same story. No, it's worse. See exhibit A. > One of my biggest beefs about the WB environment is that it is too difficult > to change options.... You're talking about the workbench *user* interface. I'm talking about the workbench *programmer* interface. See exhibit B. > Maybe I misunderstood your intent here, > but this is exactly what I feel you would be doing by making CLI run under > Workbench, rather than the other way around. Currently, neither runs under either. The Workbench and the CLI are two completely different and mutually exclusive run environments layered on top of a 'process' structure. In the CLI you run as part of the CLI process, and in the workbench you run as a seperate process... much as you do in UNIX. > Am I just dense, or what? No, you probably just haven't done much programming in this area of the system. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today? Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn business.