benoni@ssc-vax.UUCP (Charles L Ditzel) (12/31/86)
-EZTOS-
I just finished seeing a demo of eztos which i found *very* encouraging.
I don't know who created it but someone out there is about to make the
current GEM desktop extinct. The good things i noticed were :
1) the icons don't snap, they can be placed anywhere on the
desktop.
2) the trash can is very Macintosh-like, clicking on the trash
can brings up a window (you empty it just like the Mac via
the pop-up menu).
3) i clicked 21 times on the drive A icon and got 21 windows! No
limitation of eight.
4) the pop-up menus include a way of adjusting the background screen
bits like the Mac, adjusting color (like the GEM control panel),
and a number of other items,
5) the file icons can be placed on the desktop alongside the icons,
6) the pop-up menu is a bit flashier than the regular GEM menus- they
are heavily shadowed,
7) scrolling is *very* smooth and quite clear (that is words are visible
as they scroll by),
Some not so good things about the demo :
1) the demo crashed with my hard disk hooked up, i got some bizarre
exception (division by zero or something like that),
2) the demo did not allow copying (though delete seemed to work),
and a number of menu items were not operational.
Some things that would be nice while this thing is in the development
phase :
1) An icon that would be akin to the bin/csh icon on a Sun (am I
dreaming Unix). Clicking on it would popup as many command line
windows as memory would allow!
2) A copying mechanism that would allow copying between windows ala
Apollo (Display Manager) Editor.
3) A tools floating popup menu brought up by the right mouse button
(akin to desk accessories).
Question : does anyone know who the developer of eztos is?
-40 FOLDER LIMIT-
Instead of warning us about the dangers of going over the 40 folder limit
is Atari DOING anything about it? Like a patch to OS. New ROMS. I mean this
is a pretty dubious 'feature' Atari are you listening?
Do you have any plans to remedy the problem?