kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) (12/24/86)
<The Flame> I like the workbench. I am an experienced software engineer and I use both the workbench and CLI. I understand how command line interfaces work and am comfortable with commands. I know the CLI allows you to put all your options into the command line. BUT I LIKE TO USE INTUITION BETTER. It is more visual, gives more cues about what you are doing. It is not terrible. It is not too slow. What's wrong with you guys anyway? The Amiga disk is FAST compared to many many systems I have used. Maybe the complainers are people who don't know what slow is really like? <Technical Contribution> I do wish people would be careful with the icons. There is a standard form for project, tool, and drawer icons, and when people go crazy drawing their own cute pictures for icons, the user interface looses its consistency. When you make a new tool, remember that a prototypical tool icon looks like o 3-d box, and a project icon looks like a page of paper with a corner folded down, and try to draw your cute icon within the outline of this structure. It makes life easier for the people who like to use intuition. It is a serious problem that you can create objects without the .info files using the cli and have invisible files. The system should do something. Maybe display automatically a sort of default TOOL, DRAWER, or PROJECT icon for files with no icon and posessing the property of executable, directory, or <nothing special>. Another solution would be to put the icon image and location into the directory. This makes directories bigger, but what the heck. Directory listing and cleaning up is faster since there is only 1 file written. Maybe better disk caching or revision of the storage algorithm would also improve things... I too wish I knew more about using the tool types thingie in the .info file. It isn't in any manual in obvious form, although I bet it is available in a diffuse way in the Intuition manual. <oops, more flamage> Oh, yeah, file globbing. Quit whining. File globbing on an argument by argument basis is no problem if there is a good library function for file globbing. It makes programs more genral for an only slightly increased programmer effort. Like anything else, if it gets to be the fashion to do file globbing in the commands, everyone will feel like they have to do it and (virtually) all commands will have it. It is more flexible to have commands do globbing.
carroll@unirot.UUCP (mark carroll) (12/25/86)
In article <210@dragon.tc.fluke.COM> kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) writes: ><The Flame> > >I like the workbench. I am an experienced software engineer and I use both >the workbench and CLI. I understand how command line interfaces work and am >comfortable with commands. I know the CLI allows you to put all your options >into the command line. BUT I LIKE TO USE INTUITION BETTER. It is more Just a minor point here. Intuition is NOT the same thing as the Workbench. Ive seen quite a lot of people missing this distinction lately. Intuition as most of us know, is the library and background task that handle pull down menus, and gadgets, and all of that. Workbench is the system that you use to run programs using all the gadgets. The reason I wanted to make this distinction is simple. I think intuition is basically excellent. However, I think workbench is horrible. Its slow, its cumbersome, its not terribly flexible, its a pain the neck. My use of WOrkbench is opening the CLI on the workbench disk at work. I cannot STAND all those miserable .info files.. they're handled pretty poorly. The best suggestion Ive seen so far is the replacement of the .info files, with the same files in a subdirectory.. that way we can have the advantages of the individual icon files, & a directory search with half the files to sort through. Mark Carroll ARPA: carroll@aim.rutgers.edu UUCP: ..!rutgers!unirot!carroll As for disclaimers, my employer doesnt even know Im here!