ralph@mit-atrp.UUCP (04/10/87)
Oops, in a previous posting (which I fear didn't get out on the net since I got only one response to it) I mentioned the idea of rewriting or replacing the "icon.library". I think it's actually called the "info.library". This is the set of routines which let the amiga diddle with the icons. Well, the crux of the idea is to have a single icon file in each directory, and by rewriting the "info.library" have a transparent use of that scheme instead of the old single .info file for each file. This would speed things up quite nicely. Questions: - this is written in assembly language, No ? - is this really hard, or just difficult ? - is anyone trying such an idea out ? - could it be made it work with both old and new schemes simultaneously, searching first for the grouped icons, and if not found resorting to the scattered .infos ? Then upon exit, grouping them automatically. A user would never have to worry, and his whole system would just keep speeding up (WOW!). I have a buddy who wrote his own 3-D library to complement the amiga's own 2-D library. It works as smoothly as the 2-D does. He did it in assembly language and it runs like a charm, autoloading just like it's supposed to and going away when not used (and RAM is needed). One person mentioned to me that it would then be a pain to manipulate the individual icons, being forced to use a "tool" to work on them. True. But the pain for the rare event of working on an icon is outweighed by the speed of opening drawers which I spend a lot of time waiting for and do much more often than making icons. We need to optimize the part of the system that is used the most ! I can only hope that Commodore is already (perhaps secretly) working on such stuff. Because I use the icon environment 95% of the time, and I need that improvement. Discussion is solicited....I may work on this as soon as I graduate (yea!).
hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (04/11/87)
In article <953@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ralph@mit-atrp.UUCP (Amiga-Man) writes: > [...] I mentioned the idea of rewriting >or replacing the "icon.library". I think it's actually called the >"info.library". This is the set of routines which let the amiga diddle >with the icons. Well, the crux of the idea is to have a single icon >file in each directory, and by rewriting the "info.library" have a >transparent use of that scheme instead of the old single .info file >for each file. This would speed things up quite nicely. There's a project going on on Genie to do a hard disk driver "Arthur" to go with their cheap hard disk "Excalibur", and they are talking about doing this sort of single icon thing. The project (the primary cheap hard disk part, anyway) appears to be serious and well under way. Also, there's a rumor that a group of unnamed ex-Amiga folks may be doing this in the future. Although one can only speculate, there does not appear to be any reason to think that Commodore is working on such a thing. There was some discussion on this and related topics in this group some months ago; the debate seemed to split between people who loved CLI and hated Workbench, and the one's who loved Workbench and hated CLI. Each group held the opposing opinion over whether this would be a good thing or not. Doug Merritt ucbvax!ingres!hatcher P.S. "Good ideas" like this often die for lack of volunteers.
louie@sayshell.umd.edu.UUCP (04/16/87)
While you can re-implement the icon.library to use a different arrangement for ICONS (all in one file per disk or per directory), you still need to hack the Workbench. So far as I have been able to tell, there is no function in the icon.library to give you the "next" icon in a directory. You have to explicity name them. The workbench program must scan though the directory to find all of the .info files to display. Hopefully, it uses icon.library routines to actually update the icons. So close... Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming