[comp.sys.apple] AppleLink--PE + mouse-ahead

AWCTTYPA@UIAMVS.BITNET ("David A. Lyons") (10/26/88)

>Date:         Mon, 24 Oct 88 21:11:31 GMT
>From:         Verney Green <geowhiz!verney@SPEEDY.CS.WISC.EDU>

>>--You get to use pull-down menus.
>In my book this is a strong disadvantage.

You're entitled to your preference.  I like to see my choices rather
than remember them all.  I suspect traditional services have a lot of
features that hardly anybody uses because their existence isn't
obvious or because their syntax is hard to figure out.

ALPE's menus can be used from mouse and/or keyboard, and they "feel"
the same as other lists of things that you get to choose from.  I
prefer to choose a library category directly from a list rather than
remember, say, that DL10 in APPDEV is where Apple II technotes are on
CompuServe.

>If I wanted pull down menus I would have bought a Mac.
>Can't Apple keep these two different lines of computers straight?

Apparently not...they seem to be growing closer together all the
time, both peripheral-wise and user-interface-wise. [Almost makes you
wonder whether the rumored Golden Gate thing is real. I think that's
the right name...it's purported to be a prototype machine that can
run both Apple II and Mac software.]

>______________________________________________________________________________
>Scott Kempf  I've got type-ahead.  I'll use this mouse when I can mouse-ahead.

Hmmm...I suppose you have a //e or //c.  On the Mac and the IIgs
(when running IIgs software rather than //e software), you *can*
mouse-ahead.  Assuming you know where an icon is about to appear, or
where the menu item you want is located, or where a button in a
dialog is going to appear, or whatever.  The Event Manager sees
things like keypresses and mouse clicks and stores them, along with
the mouse position and the time in the "event queue" for the
application to process when it's good and ready.

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--David A. Lyons              bitnet: awcttypa@uiamvs
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