Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!oracle!news From: omullarn@oracle.oracle.com (Oliver Mullarney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: MPW Wish List Summary: Its got features, we don't need toys Keywords: MPW, MacsBug, Hierarchical Menus Message-ID: <1990Feb5.004034.6097@oracle.com> Date: 5 Feb 90 00:40:34 GMT References: <14044@reed.UUCP> Reply-To: omullarn@oracle.com (Oliver Mullarney) Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.programmer Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA Lines: 39 In article <14044@reed.UUCP> bowman@reed.UUCP (Eric Bowman) writes: > >("And now, my trusty assistant Beaker, will turn up the Bunsen Burner") > >In response to an earlier flicker -- ok, I don't like heirarchical menus >either, but customizable menus is hardly a *toy* feature, and adding this >capability to MPW would not be that hard. The choice to use MPW is >frequently motivated by, among other things, the degree to which the >user can customize the environment. Isn't a certain level of graphic >intuitiveness the whole idea? (Sheesh - wadayado, debug your shell scripts >in MacsBug?) > >("Thank you, Beaker. Beaker?") > Customizable menus, I agree, is not a toy feature. Everything you can do should be in menus, including the 'aliases' you create for frequently used commands. This may come as a surprise to you, but MPW already does have customisable menus. What I ridiculed as a toy feature was the wish for customisable, _hierarchical_ menus. I would prefer that the people working on MPW spent their time fixing the bugs in the compilers, making tools more co-operative, talking to the SADE people to see if they can further integrate these two companion tools, not farting around with hierarchical menus. I am glad to say that, to the best of my knowledge, the MPW people are talking to the SADE people, working on the compilers etc. Not a word yet about hierarchical menus... As for debugging tools in MacsBug, I have had to do that (not very often, though even once is too often...) - try debugging an MPW tool using SADE and you will realise that life is just too short. Oliver (How come nobody else had any complaints about the compilers etc.? I'm feeling lonely). | Oliver Mullarney | "I have knowledge of Digital Watches, and soon I | | Oracle Corporation | shall have knowledge of Video Cassette Recorders" | | omullarn@oracle.com | Time Bandits | --------------- "Universally acknowledged to work just fine" ----------------