[comp.sys.amiga] File requestor

new@udel.edu (Darren New) (02/06/90)

One thing that always bugged me about the Mac was that file requestors
were so much different from the Finder.  It's the same on the Amiga.
Normally, you select what you want to act upon (this paragraph, say)
and then give the menu command (cut, say).  But with open or save,
you first select the menu command and then go thru an unintuitive 
method of selecting a file name with none of those great positional
iconic images that make finding you files easy.  

I propose a solution:
If CBM is actually putting a filereq.library in 1.4 then it would be easy
to update its implementation whenever the implementation of Workbench changes.
Hence, why not add a button, selectable when workbench is running and icons
are selected, that will copy the info from the workbench to the requestor.
That is, to open a file from within (say) dpaint, go to the workbench screen,
go thru your dirs to find your picture icon, and then go back to the
dpaint screen and click "from workbench" to fill in the path and file name.
To save a new file, click on the drawer to be saved in and only the drawer
gets changed in the requestor. To select multiple files (like for creating
an ANIM), just shift-click.  This seems especially reasonable now that
1.4 is rumored to have icons for all files. It seems like it would be fairly 
easy to run thru workbench's lists of icons to find the selected ones
IF you knew where they all were. I think this would make the requestor
much easier and consistent to use, especially if the "from workbench"
functionality was made accessible even if using a custom requestor.
Basically, Workbench becomes your only file requestor. Opinions? -- Darren

navas@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David C. Navas) (02/07/90)

In article <10276@nigel.udel.EDU> new@udel.edu (Darren New) writes:
>Basically, Workbench becomes your only file requestor. Opinions? -- Darren

I wanted to do something with this with JazzBench.

David Navas
navas@cory.berkeley.edu