radford@calgary.UUCP (01/26/87)
In article <607@runx.OZ>, clubmac@runx.OZ (Sydney University Macintosh Society) writes: > 3) Something silly about Finder 5.4b1 is that it has an animated watchcursor, > just like Servant. Is there any need for such a thing? If this is what I think it is, it's an AWFUL idea. The original backup utility for the Hyperdrive had a silly watch cursor with a hand that turned. They got rid of it, thank god. The only use of the thing seems to be to demonstrate how clever the programmer is. Think about it. The watch cursor is there when the user has to WAIT. What is he going to do? Personally, I lean back and think about what I'm going to do next, what to make for dinner, or whatever. Motion on the screen automatically grabs my attention. An animated watch cursor says: IMPORTANT, LOOK: Ha Ha, you've got to wait. Radford Neal
vito@trwspf.UUCP (01/28/87)
In article <765@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes: >In article <607@runx.OZ>, clubmac@runx.OZ (Sydney University Macintosh Society) writes: >> 3) Something silly about Finder 5.4b1 is that it has an animated watchcursor, >> just like Servant. Is there any need for such a thing? >If this is what I think it is, it's an AWFUL idea. The original backup >utility for the Hyperdrive had a silly watch cursor with a hand that turned. >They got rid of it, thank god. The only use of the thing seems to be to >demonstrate how clever the programmer is. Actually, I think it is a good idea. I lot of times a program hangs (due to various reasons), it happens with when the watch cursor is up. If the program has really hung, you can't really tell because you are suppose to wait. Only after an unreasonable amount of time you begin to think, "Hey there is something wrong here." I have had the Finder hang (rarely) when doing certain operations and I would rather know that when it tells me to wait, that it is actually doing something and not hanging. Of course, I would feel differently if the Mac were multitasking... -- Herb Barad - TRW Data Systems Lab ARPA: barad@brand.usc.edu or vito%trwspf.uucp@brand.usc.edu USENET: ...!{brand|trwrb}!trwspf!vito
lamy@ai.toronto.edu (01/28/87)
My mother thought the machine was dead the first time the watch came up. jfl
bc@mit-amt.UUCP (01/28/87)
> In article <765@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes: > >In article <607@runx.OZ>, clubmac@runx.OZ (Sydney University Macintosh Society) writes: > >> 3) Something silly about Finder 5.4b1 is that it has an animated watchcursor, > >> just like Servant. Is there any need for such a thing? > >If this is what I think it is, it's an AWFUL idea. The original backup > >utility for the Hyperdrive had a silly watch cursor with a hand that turned. > >They got rid of it, thank god. The only use of the thing seems to be to > >demonstrate how clever the programmer is. The need for the moving watch cursor is as follows: While the hands are turning, you are assured that the machine is "doing something" and not just "stuck in a loop". The watch hands are updated as macroscopic progress is made, for example, every time the Finder copies a chunk of disk. They are not driven by an interrupt. I'm also sure that Apple would avoid the gnarly bugs that surfaced in the BCS-distributed moving watch hands, which were independent of application. My source indicates that the watches are just different cursors, so the entire process is merely keeping track of which thing to SETCURSOR to next. A less-cutesy, more usable idea would have been to replace the menu bar with a "progress" bargraph, or have a countdown timer. Implication being that this would tell you how long before you got your machine back. This is, er, non-trivial, tho, so I'm not surprised it doesn't exist. I'm sure a more formal, less cute indicator would sit better with the serious folks. But look at it for what it gives you, not what form it takes...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.bc PS. I personally recommend against using alpha and beta tests of system software, especially when they don't really give you any "new" features, the old versions are bug-free and the new are not, and the bugs might destroy a LOT of data.
radford@calgary.UUCP (01/28/87)
In article <176@trwspf.UUCP>, vito@trwspf.UUCP (Herb Barad) writes: > >> Something silly about Finder 5.4b1 is that it has an animated watchcursor, > >> just like Servant. Is there any need for such a thing? > >If this is what I think it is, it's an AWFUL idea... > Actually, I think it is a good idea. I lot of times a program hangs (due > to various reasons), it happens with when the watch cursor is up. If the > program has really hung, you can't really tell because you are suppose to > wait. I presume these animated watch cursors are implemented by installing a vertical retrace interrupt routine. If so, they aren't a very reliable guide to whether the application as a whole is still operating. My guess is that the watch cursor will keep turning as long as you can move the mouse. Do you really sit there looking at the animated watch cursor so you can tell immediately if your application has crashed? If so, you need more reliable software. Radford Neal
oster@lapis.berkeley.edu.UUCP (01/29/87)
The animated watch hands spin because they are spun by a separate task (So there, all you Amiga owners.) As a result, the watch hands often continue to spin even when the program has crashed. Menu Clock, the clock on the menu bar, only updates the time when an application gives it permission to by calling SystemTask(). If the time colon stops blinking for a long time, then you have a hint that the system is hung that is a little clearer for me than the watch hand. Since the watch hand runs as a separate task, it is eating CPU time at the very time when all the CPU is needed by the main task to get the job done faster. Now if it were really a countdown timer that let you know how long the job would take, that would be another matter, but as it stands it is a bad idea for two reasons: 1.) it attracts attention to the screen when there really isn't any reason for the machine to get our attention. 2.) it eats processing power when processing power is scarce. I think these override its cuteness value. --- David Phillip Oster -- "We live in a Global Village." Arpa: oster@lapis.berkeley.edu -- Uucp: ucbvax!ucblapis!oster -- "You are Number Six."
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (01/30/87)
>> 3) Something silly about Finder 5.4b1 is that it has an animated watchcursor, >> just like Servant. Is there any need for such a thing? > >If this is what I think it is, it's an AWFUL idea. The original backup >utility for the Hyperdrive had a silly watch cursor with a hand that turned. >They got rid of it, thank god. The only use of the thing seems to be to >demonstrate how clever the programmer is. > >Think about it. The watch cursor is there when the user has to WAIT. What >is he going to do? Personally, I lean back and think about what I'm going >to do next, what to make for dinner, or whatever. Motion on the screen >automatically grabs my attention. An animated watch cursor says: IMPORTANT, >LOOK: Ha Ha, you've got to wait. > > Radford Neal Think about it. The watch cursor is there when the user has to WAIT. But for how long? After 2 minutes, has the machine crashed? Should I try to abort or reboot? How about 5 minutes? At least the spinning watch tells me that something is still working, and presumably my operation is still being performed. That's a good thing to know. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt
woody@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (01/30/87)
As I recall, the Xerox 1108 InterLisp-D workstation uses a sandglass for it's "watch cursor." The sandglass contained sand, and as the routine tieing up the processor progressed, the sand in the sandglass worked its way from the top to the bottom. Incredibly cute; sufficient that I was thinking of using it to show progress in a computation loop in a stats package I'm writing. - William Woody Mac! > ][n && /|\ woody@tybalt.caltech.edu woody@juliet.caltech.edu
dennisg@fritz.UUCP (01/30/87)
<...some discussion about the animated watch cursor in new Finder...> In article <176@trwspf.UUCP> vito@trwspf.UUCP (Herb Barad) writes: >Actually, I think it is a good idea. I lot of times a program hangs (due >to various reasons), it happens with when the watch cursor is up. If the >program has really hung, you can't really tell because you are suppose to >wait. Only after an unreasonable amount of time you begin to think, "Hey >there is something wrong here." I have had the Finder hang (rarely) when >doing certain operations and I would rather know that when it tells me >to wait, that it is actually doing something and not hanging. Using the animated watch cursor as an "I am alive" indicator sounds good if it's implemented "right". If the spinning hands are hooked into something like the video retrace interrupt, the hands might keep on spinning even though the Finder is belly-up. In such a case, the animation is just ginger-bread... and not worth the space on my system disk. <disclaimer: I don't have this version of the Finder yet, and I sure don't know how it was implemented!>
naftoli@aecom.UUCP (02/01/87)
In article <777@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>, radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes: > I presume these animated watch cursors are implemented by installing a > vertical retrace interrupt routine. If so, they aren't a very reliable > guide to whether the application as a whole is still operating. My guess > is that the watch cursor will keep turning as long as you can move the > mouse. I don't think it is implemented using vertical retrace since it spins irregularly. If it was implemented using vertical retrace, I would think it would spin at regular intervals. -- Robert N. Berlinger Systems Analyst, Scientific Computing Center Compuserve: 73047,741 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Easylink: 62956067 UUCP: ...{philabs,cucard,pegasus,rocky2}!aecom!naftoli GEnie: R.Berlinger
roger@felix.UUCP (02/02/87)
I prefer a busy indicator that at least gives me some idea of what's going on. In MPW, the busy indicator is a "spinning beach ball." It actually provides the user with more information than the simple fact that the computer is off doing something. For example, when the Pascal compiler is running, the ball spins one direction for syntax checking and meta-code generation, and the other way for final code generation. In this case, the program has a couple of calls it can use to tell the ball to rotate one direction or the other -- there is nothing in the vertical retrace loop accomplishing this. Roger
6111231@PUCC.BITNET (02/02/87)
>I don't think it is implemented using vertical retrace since it spins >irregularly. If it was implemented using vertical retrace, I would >think it would spin at regular intervals. >-- >Robert N. Berlinger >Systems Analyst, Scientific Computing Center Compuserve: 73047,741 >Albert Einstein College of Medicine Easylink: 62956067 >UUCP: ...{philabs,cucard,pegasus,rocky2}!aecom!naftoli GEnie: R.Berlinger Is this like the spinning disk in Fedit+? I have the impression that Fedit's disk is linked to the progress it is making on the current task. I wouldn't mind something like that in the finder, in fact I would prefer the disk to spinning watch hands on aesthetic grounds :-). By the way: does anyone know how to use the Fragmentation index in Fedit+? By that I mean, say, if it goes beyond "x" the volume is dangerously fragmented. Peter Wisnovsky Virtual Address: UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!6111231@pucc.bitnet
dgold@apple.UUCP (02/03/87)
In article <777@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes: >I presume these animated watch cursors are implemented by installing a >vertical retrace interrupt routine. If so, they aren't a very reliable >guide to whether the application as a whole is still operating. My guess >is that the watch cursor will keep turning as long as you can move the >mouse. Finder 5.4 will not turn the hands on the animated watch cursor unless it is actually making progress doing something. I believe the cursor animation is performed by repeated calls to SetCursor, not by a VBL task. -- David Goldsmith Apple Computer, Inc. MacApp Group AppleLink: GOLDSMITH1 UUCP: {nsc,dual,sun,voder,ucbvax!mtxinu}!apple!dgold CSNET: dgold@apple.CSNET, dgold%apple@CSNET-RELAY
wagner@bnrmtv.UUCP (02/03/87)
> Since the watch hand runs as a separate task, it is eating CPU time at the > very time when all the CPU is needed by the main task to get the job done > faster. Although I would generally agree with this it is not always true. Frequently the system must wait for IO...an instance when there is time to spin the hands or do some other processing. Mark Wagner @ BNR
joel@gould9.UUCP (02/04/87)
In article <436@apple.UUCP>, dgold@apple.UUCP (David Goldsmith) writes: > In article <777@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes: > Finder 5.4 will not turn the hands on the animated watch cursor unless it is > actually making progress doing something. I believe the cursor animation is > performed by repeated calls to SetCursor, not by a VBL task. More on the spinning watch cursor in Finder 5.4. The Finder has 8 'CURS' resources, numbered 256-263. #256 is the familiar 9:00 one. Other times seem to be 8:37, 8:45, 8:52, 9:07, 9:15, 9:22, 9:30 (or is it 8:30?) Finder 5.4 also has a single 'acur' resource, which consists of the following 16-bit integers: 8 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 Does this mean a future QuickDraw trap to handle 'acur' resources? I think I like the MPW beachball better; it only requires 4 CURS resources (0, 45, 90, 135 degrees, since a 180 degree rotation is the same as 0) and is a lot more visible. I don't know how they do it, since there are no 'CURS' or 'acur' resources in MPW 1.0.1. Maybe if CURS resources went to 64x64 I'd like the spinning watch better. -- Joel West MCI Mail: 282-8879 Western Software Technology, POB 2733, Vista, CA 92083 {cbosgd, ihnp4, pyramid, sdcsvax, ucla-cs} !gould9!joel joel%gould9.uucp@NOSC.ARPA
sara@mcvax.cwi.nl (SARA) (02/05/87)
I have written (and posted) the very first running watch for Macintosh (back in 1985) so I'll explain how I did it... Implementing an animated cursor using some predefined cursors and doing a setcursor of these cursors will only work for certain cursor shapes like wheels etc, but NOT for a watch cursor that has both hands running. That would require a huge number of cursors... Now, to make the hands running you could just use QuickDraw for drawing the hands in a small bitmap, the Cursor data. Performing a SetCursor will display the cursor with the updated hands. This way an application can make the hands of a cursor spin. So, here no vertical retrace tasks are used here. This only works WITHIN an application, the application itself must periodically update the cursor. (This was implemented in my TeX Preview program, and before that in a tiny demo program that did nothing but displaying 'Wait' in the Menu Bar and animating the cursor.) Now Servant and the new Finder use this method. To make the hands spin over all applications you need to do more. The only way to get control over the cursor when another application is running is by using a vertical retrace task, that is installed one way or the other. A natural way to install a VR task is using an INIT that installs this task at system startup. However, Vertical retrace tasks are severely limited, for example they cannot even use QuickDraw, as they are not allowed to use any routine that (indirectly) uses the memory manager. First of all the task must determine whether the cursor IS a watch. If it IS it must periodically update the hands to make them spin. The problem is to find out how to do this without using QuickDraw 8-). I have posted the lastest version of my Watch Installer to the moderator of mod.mac.binaries. It installs an INIT in the system that will animate the hands of the watch cursor using the vertical retrace method. Whether ot not you like to have an animated watch on the screen is not only a matter of taste. It depends on the speed of the rotating hands whether it really draws your attention or not. The Finder doen't display a watch cursor very often, and in most cases not very long either. Other applications, like Kermit when down loading a file, display watch cursors at great length. *I* happen to like gently spinning hands, most people don't even notice it until they are told the hands are spinning... Rick Jansen SARA, Amsterdam Universities Bitnet: Rick@hasara5 UUCP: mcvax!rick@hasara5.bitnet