mjw@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Witbrock) (12/11/88)
Since people are posting wishes for 1.4, let me add one.
The reason foolish people ( no I'm not serious) buy Mac's is that they
are (purported) to be easy to use.
Amiga's have a real operating system, and are therefore somewhat harder to use.
What I therefore propose is that Commodore add something to the operating
system to help the uninitiated (and those of us who occasionally forget
templates).
In short... MAKE THE HELP KEY WORK.
Add another disk to the distribution if necessary.
If you hit the help button when the mouse is in the workbench, a window should
appear that tells you about disk icons, and menus. (Maybe it could talk (at
first), just to seem friendlier)
If you hit it when you have an disk icon selected, it should tell you what you
con do with it.
On other icons, it should display some kind of standardised help information
in a file pointed to in the tool types for that icon (or 'no help was made
available by FileName').
In the CLI, on an empty line, it should give a summary of the help command,
and a list of other help topics available. On a filled in line, it should
get the help file for the program the user is trying to call.
I really think that if C-A made the help key work, and made it clear that
they expected developers to do likewise, they could seriously increase sales
of the machines to `professional' (read mac-using) buyers.
It would also help people like me, who keep on forgetting how to get some
amigados to do what my unixified brain expects it to do (the fact that I have
chucked dshell in favour of 1.3 shell is a tribute to improvements already
wraught).
By the way, if looking for a model of help.... man pages are not it.
VMS help is better. Andrew help is better still.
Personal computers need friendlier, smarter help systems than unix systems.
Thanks for listening all.
Michael
P.S. I wonder whether CA has talked with NeXT about licensing NeXTStep. It
looked as if it would run on an amiga base to me, and boy would that blow
macs out of the water.
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