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From: C506634@umcvmb.missouri.edu (Eric Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Pet Peves or Why,  oh why do they do this? (long)
Message-ID: <16916@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 5 Jun 89 16:31:09 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 88

After silently accepting the following abuses in many pd and commerical
    programs I have decided to compile a list and submit them to the net in
    hopes of reducing these anoyances.  So here they are in order of
    decreasing agravation...

1) No Multitasking
        Well, this one pretty much speaks for itself.  I will tolerate this
        only in games and even then the game has to be just short of
        extrordinary to be acceptable.

2) Full size, gadgetless windows on the workbench screen
        This is almost the same as #1.  The programs that are already running
        will continue running but you can't start up any new ones!
        This is darn near inexcuseable.  If you absolultely must have a
        borderless, gadgetless window put it on a custom screen.  I still won't
        like it but it might be useable.
        Known culprits: Hed, PerfectSound

3) Full size, non-resisable windows on the workbench screen.
       This is pretty much the same as #2 except now there are click to back
       and click to front gadgets.  If can still multitask as long as I have a
       cli window already open but if I don't it's no better than #2.

4) Turning off the Screen DMA.
      I only know of one program that does this, NIB.  I usually turn off the
      monitor durring coppies becuase of this.  If NIB wasn't such a good
      product otherwise as well as the ONLY shareware copy program I wouldn't
      use it at all.

5) Full size, non-resizealbe windows on Custom screens.
     Now we get to programs that I can tolerate some of the time.  These work
    just fine when you are using only one program with a custom screen.
    Amiga-m and Amiga-n work very nicely.  But if you have two or more custom
    you will eventually have to juggle the screens that CAN be pushed back,
    hunt for a "send to back" menu item on the offending screen or failing that
    actually shut down the program just to get to a screen that got behind that
    program.
    This is really unecessary.  If the program needs 25 lines then use overscan
    Known Offender: VLT

6)  Unessarily tying up the CPU.
    This is usually the result of "busy looping"  A prime offender in this
    catagory is the Lattice Screen Editor.  Everything else slows to a crawl
    when this program is running.   I haven't seen any other editors do this.

7)  Poor use of system resources.
    This covers anything from old versions of zoo not removing file locks to
    Sonix grabing the serial port.  A related problem is with LSE (again)
    Ever try to abort a print job in LSE?  You can't!  You click on abort at
    the system requestor and LSE trys again!

8)  Poor use of memory.
    No, I don't mean programs that are just big.  I can live with that most of
    the time.  I mean things like programs that continue to alocate memory
    until there is so little left that the system gurus or the many editors
    that will not edit a 400k file on a 1 meg system becuase they seem to want 3
    3 bytes for every byte in the file.

9)  Programs that do not use menus or anything resembling them.
    Most of these programs are unreasonaly difficult to learn.  They may turn
    out to be very nice one you get that hang of it but I probobly won't find
    out becuase it's not worth my time to pour over the manual several times
    until I have enough familarity with the program to see if it's usefull!
    Known Offenders:  DME, Analyticalc
    I am actaully trying to learn Analyticalc because it sounds so impressive
    but it's not easy.

10)  Programs that won't run from workbench.
    I pardon all programs that don't make much since from workbench such as
    compilers, cli commands and the like.
    Come on.  How much work can it be make the program workbench launchable?
    Some of these programs don't do any I/O at all to the cli!

Well that about does it.  While most of what I have incountered is with PD and
shareware programs my opinions stand for commerical as well.
Most of these infractions would not be so grave if they wern't so widespread
and many of the programs to do them so excelent in other regards.  :-(

Guess I'll just sit back and watch the flames roll in... :-)

Bitnet:    C506634@umcvmb.bitnet                    __________________________
Internet:  C506634@umcvmb.missouri.edu             / \.--------.           /  \
"The Amiga just isn't reliable enough unless you   |  | Eric   |---------+    |
know a lot about the machine" -- Jerry Pournelle   |  `--------'         !    |
  ================================================||  .--------.         !    |
"I did notice that at my party people stood in     |  | Edwards|_________+    |
 line to play with the Amiga"-- Jerry Pournelle    | /`--------'             |
                           BYTE, October '88       \__________________________/