Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!previous.cis.ohio-state.edu!jgreely From: jgreely@previous.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Various comments/questions/suggestions Message-ID: <48273@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 13 May 89 17:31:09 GMT References: <238@quartz.atexnet.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: J Greely Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 192 In article <238@quartz.atexnet.UUCP> rose@quartz.UUCP (Robert Rose) writes: >Here is a list of some comments, suggestions, and problems I've >been having. Thanks. It's nice to hear someone else's candid opinions. I'm really glad to see you NeXT people (Ali and >Avadis especially) reading this newsgroup and responding! Unofficially, of course :-) >GENERAL: >1)Click to type vs. mouse position focus (ala Sun). I want a choice! This is a religious issue. In our environment, we push X and NeWS, so most people think of c-t-t as a bad thing. It isn't, necessarily, but I find the frustration factor is rather high among people who are used to X. >This should be settable! Also, it's very anoying when you >hide something, and then NOBODY is the listener. Better yet, if you get a "printer out of paper" dialog, and click to make it go away, you've lost your active window. >In the preferences panel, a new 'focus' pallette would be needed >for these two settings. Actually, if you take the "desktop" model far enough, you could state that it's intuitive that removing the top ("active") document automatically sets your focus on the new top document (which sounds suspiciously like that M-word). That would be acceptable as a default, and then allow the other option to be "focus follows mouse". I think this would make most of our people happy. Those comfortable with the Mac would understand how the click-to-type worked, and the X people could feel at home. The NeWS people would still be disgusted because it's not *their* PostScript :-) >FONTS: >Any word yet on getting some more fonts? I assume Adobe is working >on it (we use Optima a lot here in Kodak!) Adobe did announce that they were working on getting their entire font library ready for use on NeXT machines, presumably in the same price range they use for the PC and Mac worlds. >LPR: >1) lpr cuts off text on the right. When you bring it into >Edit and Print it comes out OK. What happens if you use enscript? And what do you mean by ok? Is it that files too wide to be printed get chopped off from lpr, and wrapped from Edit and Print? I consider this acceptable, since lpr is only doing what I told it to. Of course, to conform in our environment, I'll be replacing /usr/lib/transcript/pstext with a wrapper for enscript (more reliable, and easier to reconfigure). This will also make long lines wrap, but I can live with it :-). >PRINTING (from applications): >Many 'beta' applications fry PS when you try to print (FrameMake, sometimes >WriteNow). Well, FrameMaker doesn't appear to print through lpd, so it's *got* to be doing something wrong. (print from Frame with not enough paper; you'll never see an "out-of-paper" dialog box, and lpd will think all is well) But I've never had a problem with the window system getting scrogged, just the printer. What exactly happens to you? > Laurie Sefton gave me a good hack, when the PS gets bugged >log out and log into the 'exit' account (no passwd); it will reset >PS and log you out. Sort of. According to the latest I've heard, the way to keep npd running is to make sure that everyone has "public window server" set in Preferences. The 'exit' hack works, but this supposedly avoids the problem altogether. Still a bug, though. >If you're trying to use yellow pages logins (ie, the +:0::0.... stuff at >the end of /etc/passwd) and your home path is somewhere else (like on >a Sun) and there is no .NeXT directory in your home path, you can't log in. I can't duplicate that here. Under 0.9, I haven't had anyone be unable to log in due to lack of a .NeXT directory. Can you give me a precise repeat-by? >Also, the /etc/fstab file says it is not read if you're using netinfo. >that's not true!! I have some entries that mount my old sun's disks >in /etc/fstab, and whenever I reboot, it reads those and mounts my disks! Actually, it's not read unless you enable YP (see the manual for NetInfo). I'm jealous, because I couldn't get it to do that, and ended up shoving my NFS mounts in NetInfo (which, with documentation, is pretty easy). Part of my problem is that /etc/mount dumps core whenever I try to use it with the -a option. >MAIL: >1) No options for inserting file, and/or saving a letter as a file. >I do this a lot! I don't use Mail, but this would be a real problem if I did. If the NeXT Mail program is less capable than standard Berkeley mail, I won't touch it. Friendly user interfaces are one thing (and BSD mail needs one), but sacrificing features for tail-wagging is another. All heat aside, it *is* a young program, and needs to be solid for the basics first, but I do hope someone is working on making it more capable. >3) The 'reply to' field isn't quite right. The problem has to do with >domains, I believe. When I send a message out, it looks like you can >reply to me with 'rose@onyx' (onyx is the CUBE) or 'rose@quartz' >(my Sun) depending on where I sent it from. How do you use the NeXT mailer from your Sun? If both machines generate bogus reply-to's, the problem isn't in Mail. I'm not sure what's wrong here. This is one of those cases where the headers would be useful (so, if you sent me sample mail from both, I might be able to see what's going on. Doesn't mean I can tell you how to fix it, but at least I should (he said, *should*) be able to tell you where to start looking). >INTERFACE BUILDER: > How about shipping the .9 IB docs with >the system, or at least posting ascii versions here? The up to date >docs should help a lot. Funny, I thought they *were* shipped, online. The large document in the Librarian that contains the whole preliminary chapter (Chapter 7, BTW). If you can't get a successful search for it in the Librarian, try firing up WriteNow and opening /NextLibrary/Documentation/NeXT/SysRefMan/07_IntfBuilder.wn Runs to about 70K of text, with twelve illustrations. I don't have mine here, or I'd even give you a page count. >OTHER: >1)Has anyone heard of (and know where I can get) some software to 'read' a >text file? i.e. convert ascii to voice. Not listed in the third-party notes I have, but I'd be surprised if someone doesn't do it fairly soon. >2) When you bring up an application, sometimes it's menu in the upper left just >sits on top of the menu for the previous application! It's hard to >reproduce, but it definetely happens sometimes! If the former active App is busy doing something (like Mathematica running a long calculation), this will happen. I'd blame it on applications that aren't completely conformant with the interface guidelines yet. >3) Minor bug in more: when it's at the page and asks for '--More-- (n%)', the --More-- string stays on the screen. It should go away. This is a hacked more. Someone has "done things" with it. I suspect the modification came from CMU. It doesn't bother me, since I use less (shipped as standard software, no "less"). >I know all the IB stuff >and most else has the objective-c wrapper around it, but some >of us have lots of code written in c++. I think people at NeXT >should take the responsibility of either getting g++ to compile >on the cube (and then including it in 1.0), or at least verifying >that at&t cfront compiles and runs on it. Some of us have lots of code written in COBOL, too. Should *that* be standard software? Not trying to jump on you, but why should NeXT support two completely different object-oriented extensions to C, one of which they never use? You lost me here. > MANY people have asked me >about this here (since we do lots of c++). So pick up G++ and see if it compiles. >5) What happened to Lisp? I though we were supposed to get a terminal >based version with .9? I can't find it. It works fine. I haven't gotten any real feedback from our local lisp hackers yet, but it's certainly there. The manual pages are incorrect, but the release notes are right. Script started on Sat May 13 13:24:01 1989 % cl Allegro CL 3.1.0.5 [NeXT] (4/2/89 3:43) Copyright (C) 1985-1989, Franz Inc., Berkeley, CA, USA (exit) ; Exiting Lisp % exit script done on Sat May 13 13:24:13 1989 -=- J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)