ari@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ari Halberstadt) (04/06/91)
In article <20072@imag.imag.fr> gourdol@imag.imag.fr (Gourdol Arnaud) writes: >In article <1991Apr4.024724.27910@midway.uchicago.edu> jcav@quads.uchicago.edu (john cavallino) writes: >>I think the Standard File dialog is a relic of the days before Multifinder >>and inter-application communication. Especially in light of the dramatic >>improvements in the System 7 Finder, it seems to me that there should be only >I agree with you, the Standard File dialog shouldn't exist. >However its disparition brings a couple of problems: >The open commands sometimes needs aditional parameters to open its >document (for example are the plain text file with a CR at the If every application expects a standard file dialog, why can't Apple make an optional file dialog which is a movable modal dialog? Any well written application should be able to cope with movable modal dialogs. Lets get rid of those ugly modal dialogs, and try to restrict their use to things like alerts and a few other truly modal situations. Why not have a truly modeless standard file dialog? (I'm not sure about this one, but with the advent of large screens it wouldn't create much clutter, and it could be hidden on suspend events.) What's the easiest way to convert an application to modeless dialogs? Use only one event loop! Don't call WaitNextEvent from 10 places in your code, call it only from the top of the event loop, and make your event loop reentrant so that it can be run from the middle of a long calculation. I'm not sure how this fits into MacApp, but I imagine MacApp does a similar thing. Converting alerts into dialogs also simplifies life (I'm prepared to defend this position, so only flame me about this if you want to have fun :).
231b3679@fergvax.unl.edu (Mike Gleason) (04/06/91)
ari@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ari Halberstadt) writes: >In article <20072@imag.imag.fr> gourdol@imag.imag.fr (Gourdol Arnaud) writes: >>In article <1991Apr4.024724.27910@midway.uchicago.edu> jcav@quads.uchicago.edu (john cavallino) writes: >>>I think the Standard File dialog is a relic of the days before Multifinder >>>and inter-application communication. Especially in light of the dramatic >>>improvements in the System 7 Finder, it seems to me that there should be only >>I agree with you, the Standard File dialog shouldn't exist. >>However its disparition brings a couple of problems: >>The open commands sometimes needs aditional parameters to open its >>document (for example are the plain text file with a CR at the >If every application expects a standard file dialog, why can't Apple >make an optional file dialog which is a movable modal dialog? Any >well written application should be able to cope with movable modal >dialogs. Lets get rid of those ugly modal dialogs, and try to restrict >their use to things like alerts and a few other truly modal >situations. Why not have a truly modeless standard file dialog? (I'm >not sure about this one, but with the advent of large screens it >wouldn't create much clutter, and it could be hidden on suspend >events.) When I was working on my Amiga WDEF, I stuck in a little hack so that whenever a 'hit' was detected inside a dialog box's "drag" region, I just stuck in my own DragWindow() call. It's still modal, but atleast you can move the bugger around. What a feeling of power it is to be able to move the Standard File dialogs around... I imagine Apple's Human Interface Death Squad wouldn't like it much... _mike gleason university of nebraska