dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) (12/16/86)
Hmm. I think this defeats the purpose of the WorkBench. It's supposed to be 'user friendly'. What I purpose is simply a reorganization in the disk format (one .info file per folder rather than lots of little ones). This seems best since things are already arranged in a directory-uniform style. Placing all the information in a single file in the root directory is NOT a good idea. What I purpose is a one file per folder ascii-format editable by the user (but not REQUIRED to be edited by the user). All the information, including the icon bitmap itself (converted to a suitable ascii form) for each icon would takeup a single line in the file. Certain fields in the file would be constant-width (e.g. numbers always take three digits, etc...) so normal run-time modification by the workbench is quick. The final field on each line would contain the tool-types and not necesarily be constant-width. The first field on each line would contain an 'I exist' flag making deletion trivial (no file re-writing required), and also allow the workbench to quickly update an entry which has gotten larger (only possible by the addition of tool types) by invalidating the current entry and appending the revised entry. Of coures, there would be a general cleanup menu option in addition to the workbench automatically re-writing the file when it gets too messy. -Matt Original message: >Regarding my previous article, I just thought of another method to >implement an argument-passing mechanism for Workbench. > >Change the icon definition so that the icon contains a template of the >allowable syntax for the command. If the command has entirely >optional parameters, the command just executes if clicked on with the >"Open" option or if double-clicked. If the command has required >parameters, the Workbench throws up a requestor box and waits for the >user to enter the necessary info. A side effect of this is that the >requestor automatically gives the user the syntax of the command. > >If the user wants to pass arguments to a command that has purely >optional arguments, he can select "Open with Args" from the >"Workbench" menu or else he can set Preferences to always open a >requestor box for commands by default. > >An icon definition can also state the a command does not accept any >parameters at all. In this case, the command is simply executed no >matter what method the user takes...double-clicking, "Open" or "Open >with Args". > >Matt, what do you think?