Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!peregrine!elroy!gryphon!keithd
From: keithd@gryphon.COM (Keith Doyle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Amiga Roadblocks to User Friendliness
Message-ID: <9910@gryphon.COM>
Date: 22 Dec 88 18:09:56 GMT
References: <9407@gryphon.COM> <1410010@hpcvca.HP.COM>
Reply-To: keithd@gryphon.COM (Keith Doyle)
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 69

In article <1410010@hpcvca.HP.COM> charles@hpcvca.HP.COM (Charles Brown) writes:
>> 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
>Actually I do want to end up with that.  It makes installation
>of the tool simple.  Almost as important, it makes clean removal of
>the tool just as simple.

Except that clean removal is cleaner if all the applications keep their
specific commands in a common applications execute file, as they can
have no fear of removing commands that were inserted by them, assuming
we can all agree on a format.

Your approach requires a person's startup-sequence chain to somewhere
be modified *specifically for each manufacturer* in addition to adding
the execute files for each:

if exists s:ea_startup
execute s:ea_startup
endif
if exists s:aegis_startup
execute s:aegis_startup
endif
if exists s:newtek_startup
execute s:newtek_startup
endif
etc.
etc.
etc.


Wouldn't it be better to have:

   execute s:appspecifics

in your startup chain, and then appspecifics would look something like:

;# Aegis Videoscape 3D specifics
assign vid3d: dh2:viddir
path dh2:viddir add
;# NewTek Digi-View specifics
assign dview: dh2:dviewdir
path dh2:dviewdir add
;# Byte by Byte Animate 4D specifics
assign a4d: dh3:animate
path dh3:animate
etc.
etc.

And then make sure each program as an install/remove icon that will
automatically insert and delete their appropriate sections?  

With a system like this, a new companies HD install program can just add
their stuff to the s:appspecifics file without any operator intervention.
Your approach requires either the install program signal the operator
he must add the "if exists" junk above, or that some sort of execute
script is done to recognize files with a certain naming convention in
s: as being app specific executes, (making sure it ignores *.bak, *.info,
and a few other things) as well as doing considerably more disk thrashing
on the way up.  Not to mention difficult to explain to the novice where
and why he needs to type it in himself the first time because the existing
systems don't already contain this smart code in their startup-chains

Granted, applications need re-install (move to somewhere else) and
remove options as well as install, all of which operate on the
s:appspecifics file.

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