Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!elroy!gryphon!keithd
From: keithd@gryphon.COM (Keith Doyle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Amiga Roadblocks to User Friendliness
Message-ID: <9652@gryphon.COM>
Date: 15 Dec 88 19:22:08 GMT
References: <9407@gryphon.COM> <836@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: keithd@gryphon.COM (Keith Doyle)
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 32

In article <836@quintus.UUCP> pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes:
>Here's an approach that requires Commodore to do something, but
>something VERY simple.  Change the standard startup-sequence to include
>something like:
>
>EXECUTE S:ASSIGNS
>
>somewhere early on, and move all the standard assigns to S:ASSIGNS.
>Then installation scripts can just append to S:ASSIGNS.  Of course,
>experienced startup-sequence hackers will move things all around, and
>may even delete the EXECUTE S:ASSIGNS line, but they can do the
>installations themselves.

Something like this would probably work, but agreed, Commodore should
decide this (or something) is the standard approach and publicize it
to the developers.

We might consider wording the file name a little differently, though
it's not a big deal, assigns are not all that might go into it, certainly 
PATH commands might as well.  We could call it APPLICATIONS or something
indicating it is for application specific boot commands.

A developer could decide to take this approach without Commodore support
by simply checking for the existance of such a file, and if not finding
it, creating one and informing the operator he must add an EXECUTE S:___
to his current startup chain in an appropriate place, as a stopgap
measure.  However, you wouldn't want every developer to decide to do
this and do it slightly differently where they would become incompatible
with each other.  You don't want to end up with a S:AEGIS_STARTUP and a 
S:EA_STARTUP, and a S:BROWNWAUGH_STARTUP etc.. ad nauseum.

Keith Doyle
keithd@gryphon.COM    gryphon!keithd     gryphon!keithd@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov