hvt@tnosel.UUCP (henq) (01/25/88)
Recently, someone invited remarks on the various DBMS we have for the Mac. (I lost his address, thats why I post instead of mailing, sorry) Though I personnally have only played a little with 4th, some people I know have tested the product to a larger extent. The message is they are dissappointed, after initially being pleased with the Maccish like user interface. The complaints are(the ones I remember): 1. It is not possible to switch entry-lay outs with a single custom button- press. A menu-selection is always involved. 2. Buttons are not displayed in 'browse' mode, only in modify or insert mode. This makes it impossible to browse through a file with custom-buttons. 3. sometimes the screen gets not updated, for example after an 'Next Record' instruction after a find. 4. The way the scrolling fields get drawn is ugly, arrows and thumbs are not clipped on their windows boundaries. 5. The rumoured lack of speed indeed is a problem. A friend of mine has made a management information system of about 20 related files, containing customers, stock, repairs, invoices, etc. When a customer calls, he is found by typing his code or his number, or by browsing. If he wants to know the status on his mac-to-be-repaired, a button- click switches to the Repairs file, selecting the most recent repair order of that customer. All this works very well and very fast. It is written in Omnis3 :-(. ^^^^^ (between the bombs, that is) This friend has tried to make an equivalent system in 4Th dim. According to him, 4Th dim currently has too many limitations to build an equivalent system. One limitation being the lack of speed. I hope someone can prove him wrong. 6. A complained from myself , after having toyed with it. The user interface is _rude_. 6a The grid in the entry-lay out is useless. Ever tried to make nice border- boxes around fields ? A pain. 6b When selecting multiple fields (using a marquee), also the gray rect and the black drop-shadow rects get selected, and it is very difficult to shift-unselect them. ...and numerous other little but annoying user-interface quircks. 7 The whole program is very modal. If you choose one mode(Environment), all windows of the other environment get closed. If you get back at the previous mode, and open the same windows, they have forgotton their settings (location, size, fontsize,..). Acius should look at Filemaker plus and get inspired by the user interface of that product. I think it would also be good for the u.i. of 4Th dimension if it where ported to MacApp. (For example, the 'Structure' window would become WYSIWYG, and get 'Show paper borders' lines). 8 There is no easy way (that is, whitout making procedures) to make a selection of a file using as criterium a field of a linked file. I mean the kind of selection SQL (and dBAseMac ?) allows: 'Give all customers that have a Mac in repair with a repair cost of over $100.' (The repair data is kept in a file seperate from the customers.) I hope the most of the above points stem from the fact I and my friends do not understand the product very good. In that case I apologize. If 4Th dim indeed suffers formentioned shortcommings (and perheps even others), I hope they will get addressed in future releases. Because, I like the product (really!), but in its current implementation I do not dare to advice it to others, because I fear that when they try to build a realy complex sytem, it will reach its limits much sooner that Omnis3 will. -Henk van Tijen Have a nice day