[comp.sys.next] logout

jonas@Neon.Stanford.EDU (jonas karlsson) (02/16/90)

the only (ha ha. joke.) thing that annoys me about the NeXT is that  to
logout i need to click on the NeXT icon in the dock, click on logout (or 
hit command-q) click again to confirm that,yes, i'm going through all of this
to actually logout.   now, my idea of what logout should be is to hit
ctrl-D and then leave.
is there a way i could approach this? ie. how to write a program that does what
logout does without asking for confirmation, or alternatively, something 
that just does the regular logout sequence, confirmation and all, but can
be activated from the shell.

Are others annoyed at this? As far as i understand, NeXT's philosophy is
that you *shouldn't* logout.  and the reason for not having "logout" 
as the default button is that "logging out is a big thing" and you want 
to be really sure that you want to do this. comments?

-j

jgreely@wizard.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely) (02/16/90)

In article <1990Feb16.103722.2811@Neon.Stanford.EDU> jonas@Neon.Stanford.EDU
 (jonas karlsson) writes:
>the only (ha ha. joke.) thing that annoys me about the NeXT is that  to
>logout i need to click on the NeXT icon in the dock, click on logout (or 
>hit command-q) click again to confirm that,yes, i'm going through all of this
>to actually logout.   now, my idea of what logout should be is to hit
>ctrl-D and then leave.

That's great for a shell, but when you have a window system that may
have several applications with unsaved files, the one-key approach is
dangerous.  My problems with the NeXT logout are
  1) a keystroke equivalent is provided for logout, but not for the
     confirmation, and
  2) they quietly changed the default action on the confirmation
     dialog box from yes to no, and supplied no method for getting the
     old behavior back.

>Are others annoyed at this? As far as i understand, NeXT's philosophy is
>that you *shouldn't* logout.  and the reason for not having "logout" 
>as the default button is that "logging out is a big thing" and you want 
>to be really sure that you want to do this. comments?

Logging out *is* a big thing now.  Under 0.8, logging out would
message all open applications to save files and exit, which
(apparently) proved to be impractical.  Now you can lose work, so it
makes sense for the default action to be the safe one.  I just wish I
could change it ("yes I know the consequences of logging out, and I
really meant to do it").  Actually, it would be nice if all multiple-
choice dialog boxes could be handled completely from the keyboard,
perhaps by defining command-1 through command-0 as the choices, from
left to right.  Logout would be a quick command-q, command-1 sequence
(ok, that might actually be *too* quick for comfort).


                        "It's hard to create a truly bad printing
                         configuration, but you may find the following
                         rules helpful."
                                -- from "UNIX System Administration
                                   Handbook", Chapter 11
--
J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)