Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!ukecc!agollum
From: agollum@engr.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Pet Peves or Why,  oh why do they do this? (long)
Message-ID: <2911@ukecc.engr.uky.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 89 01:58:55 GMT
References: <16916@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: agollum@engr.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga
Organization: Way down south in the land of Basketball
Lines: 46

In episode <16916@louie.udel.EDU>, we
heard C506634@umcvmb.missouri.edu (Eric Edwards) say:
>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.

Dmouse has both a window and screen flipper, and you can start up a new
CLI any time with a hotkey.  It'sa verra verra nice...but you still can't
get to the Workbench disk icons :-(

>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...but I won't find out because it's not worth
>    my time... 
>    Known Offenders:  DME, Analyticalc

DME will let you design your own menus, and one of the supplied config
files will set up a pretty nice strip.  I do agree that the default config
could use a few menus but we're probably seeing the programmer's 
preference here (and hey, waddaya want?  it's free...).

A more reasonable complaint might be about programs which totally ignore
the Amiga interface.  ED, the screen editor supplied with Amigados, comes
to mind.  In its effort to further the state of the art, it eschews the
click-to-position-cursor interface in favor of the arrow keys and tosses
menus in favor of the meta-nonmnemonic-key-on-the-last-line-of-the-display
standard.  (How does it further the state of the art?  Picture August
1985, and all across the land is heard the cry, "Oh gawd!  First thing,
I'm gonna write a real editor!" :-)

>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?

The M2Sprint Modula-2 package comes with six runtime packages; four of these
allow starting from either workbench or cli.  The other two are delibritely
itsy-bitsy and won't allow a workbench startup.  However, you have to
specifically select one of these two to lose workbench support.

Speaking of the same package, the compiler, editor, linker, etc. all 
will start from the workbench.  You can develop code without ever
touching a CLI.

Kenneth Herron