kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) (06/28/87)
John Olsen sent this in response to my recent posting, with an invitation to
post it if I wanted. He has some interesting insights here, so I post them.
]From u-jmolse@ug.utah.edu Sun Jun 28 13:51:20 1987
]In article <1443@xanth.UUCP> you [Kent]write:
]>[...] I'd rather have one window for the commodities broker, with [a] dynamic
]>menu of all the programs available for call, by name[...]
]
]I have a hard time getting write access to the news, so I rely on mail. You
]can post this stuff for me if you are amazed by it.
]
]I like the idea of being able to get a menu of all the weird hotkey things.
]Maybe it could be set up to modify the keys each one is looking for, via the
]menu setup. This could probably even be written now under 1.2 if you have
]this "broker" which is used to run the hotkey stuff. The hotkey programs
]may not all work, since they don't know the broker is running them, however.
]
]Maybe someone can just write a do-everything broker with a module format for
]the hotkey programs, and just publish the module format sorta like iff stuff.
]With a couple of demo modules, I am sure the net would go wild. It could do
]things like WindowToFront, ScreenBlanker, ScreenSaver, ScreenDumper, Screen-
]Browser, HidePointer, and all those other fun ones. It could even be used
]on big programs. Hmm... Wouldn't this make the broker look like a mac-in-
]a-window?
]>I code SDI in C.
]The *game* SDI was, by a guy named Bruce Milner (sp?). Our boss thinks that
]Bruce is radioactive.
]>I add an integer to an enumeration; the compiler doesn't notice.
]>All die.
]>Oh, the embarrassment!
Hmmm. Wasn't trying to steal Bruce's thunder; I just found out SDI, the game,
existed yesterday, when a friend invited me over to play with _his_ Amiga.
My jest is a subtle dig at SDI, the real thing, and a not at all subtle dig at
weakly typed languages; the format of the jest comes from the old SF short
story "A !Tangled Web", which I recommend to everyone.
]u-jmolse@ug.utah.edu or ...!{seismo,ihnp4}!utah-cs!utah-ug!u-jmolse
To avoid putting down a really spectacular game (probably coded in C; sigh),
and throwing subtlety to the winds, I (again) revise my .signature:
--
Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student // Yet
UUCP : kent@xanth.UUCP or ...{sun,harvard}!xanth!kent // Another
CSNET : kent@odu.csnet ARPA : kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu \\ // Happy
USPost: P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Virginia 23501-1559 \// Amigan!
Voice : (804) 587-7760 -=][> Last one to Ceres is a rotten egg! -=][>
I code power plant reactor control in C.
I add "count_of_recent_alarms" to "count_of_rods_to_lift".
C is weakly typed; the compiler doesn't notice.
All die.
Oh, the embarrassment!