dubman@monsoon.Berkeley.EDU (Jonathan Dubman) (02/02/90)
In article <5590@hydra.gatech.EDU> erica@kong.UUCP (Erica Liebman) writes: >2. What are some of your minor (specific & potentially fixable) >quibbles about the NeXT. (A good example is dock limitations). Here are a lot of small complaints about the NeXT interface. It's a great machine - BUT: [These are in no particular order] * * * * * * * * * Automatic screen dimmer is not dim enough - can't set it in Preferences. I'm forced to use LockScreen. Browser on long directories doesn't scroll fast enough/easily enough. Browser not fully multitasking. Can't do anything else while deleting, for example. Open/Save panel - if Y is a subdirectory of X, and Y appears as the rightmost column, how do I save into directory X instead of directory Y? Once you've opened a subdirectory, the only way to save into its parent is to click on a nondirectory entry in the parent, thus closing the subdirectory, but this is clumsy and may not always work. (Another option is to type the pathname with two dots, or specify full pathname, but that defeats the purpose of the Browser.) We need a parallel of the "parent" icon or some way of closing the subdirectory. Apparently no way to build a system disk on an OD-only machine, even if I'm patient. WriteNow: Window occasionally scrolls when not necessary - distracting. WriteNow: Apparently no way to underline! WriteNow: Apparently no equivalent of Word's "style sheets" - need another level of abstraction on top of ruler. Font spacing occasionally looks bad. Observe Helvetica Bold 16, word "mail". Notice the space between the 'm' and the 'a'. Of course, Terminal and Shell need to be combined and we need at least vt102 capability. Delete Key means delete-to-left ("backspace"). How do you delete-to-right? I think we need a backspace key. Monitor causes interference if microphone is too close. Not even a warning in the User Guide. Default NMI Mini Monitor window is too small - why so small? Why isn't the tilde labelled on the ESC key? No way to move window to back without hiding it. The Amiga is the only machine I've seen that has a gadget for this, though X Window Managers often provide it as an option. I'm sure there is a system primitive for it. * * * * * * * * * That's all for now. Again, I think it's a great machine, but not perfect. I'd love to hear your opinions on all this. I'm open-minded (at least I try). Jonathan Dubman UC Berkeley