Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Amiga Roadblocks to User Friendliness
Message-ID: <6546@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 25 Dec 88 01:55:56 GMT
References: <9910@gryphon.COM>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 53

in article <9910@gryphon.COM>, keithd@gryphon.COM (Keith Doyle) says:
> 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.
> 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

Foo. Bogus. Simply have a file:

s:bbs_devices

which contains the lines:

upload_dir=DH1:uploads
bulletin_dir=DH0:bulletins
etc.

And at startup have your program grok that file i.e. DON'T use the
"assign" convention.

Then have a subroutine OpenPath in your program which:

MyFile *OpenPath(pathname,filename,mode)
  char *pathname,filename;
  int mode;
{
  ... strmov(buffer,pathname); .. strcat(buffer,filename);
  ...  Open (...);
}

and voila. 

You can have an "install" program for your novice user which tells the
user what each one of these devices does, asks where he/she wants it
to be located, if it doesn't exist ask him if he wants to create it,
etc.... all very friendly, very self-explanatory, doesn't require the
user to even KNOW what a CLI is. 

--
Eric Lee Green    ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
          Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509              
Netter A: In Hell they run VMS.
Netter B: No.  In Hell, they run MS-DOS.  And you only get 256k.