tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (05/02/90)
Note that in System 7.0 you are able to put applications into the Apple menu and launch them directly form there, as well as desk accessories. This largely obviates the need for an "icon dock". Now, if they would put the Finder icons in windows, *that* would be a good feature! I'm so sick of using "Set Aside" just to do basic Finder operations! And most people don't even have that! -- Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com FROM THE FOOL FILE: "American women, especially some of those on the net, might profit by being less concerned with their careers and more concerned with getting a good, old fashioned roll in the hay." -- William J. Fallon, wjf@cbnews.att.com, on soc.women (also uses the alias Walter J. Ficklestein)
macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) (05/02/90)
TM> Now, if they would put the Finder icons in windows, *that* would be TM> a good feature! I'm so sick of using "Set Aside" just to do basic TM> Finder operations! And most people don't even have that! What would that accomplish? The finder is always active under multifinder, so it doesn't have to be launched... and you can easily go to the finder by selecting the finder icon in the Apple Menu. The Set Aside feature isn't really intended to bring you to the finder. If you have two applications open, if you choose set aside in one, then the next job in line might be the other program... you still wont be at the desktop. What I think you're looking for is a Set Aside All (except finder of course) feature, or a way for the finder to hide the desktop with all the open windows when active... here's an idea... use ResEdit to make Set Aside a key equivalent... it may get overridden by acitve applications though, so choose the key carefully. - Chris ._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._. Chris Silverberg AOL: Silverberg Worcester Polytechnic Institute GEnie: C.Silverberg USENET: macman@wpi.wpi.edu SYSOP: Main Street U.S.A. BBS FIDONET: 322/575.1 508.832.7725 (1200/2400)
philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (05/03/90)
In article <11287@hoptoad.uucp>, tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: > Note that in System 7.0 you are able to put applications into the Apple > menu and launch them directly form there, as well as desk accessories. > This largely obviates the need for an "icon dock". If you had tear-off menus as well, all you would need is a feature to ask for full-sized application icons to be installed in the menu. Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (05/03/90)
In article <12508@wpi.wpi.edu>, macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) writes... [...] >What I think you're looking for is a Set Aside All (except finder of course) >feature, or a way for the finder to hide the desktop with all the open windows >when active... here's an idea... use ResEdit to make Set Aside a key >equivalent... it may get overridden by acitve applications though, so choose >the key carefully. Or do this: go to the Finder (thru the Apple menu is easiest), hold down the option key, and re-select the Apple menu. You'll see the item "set aside others" which will hide everything but the Finder (this of course works with other apps too). Then you can see the trash can, etc. Robert ============================================================================ = gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu * generic disclaimer: * "It's more fun to = = * all my opinions are * compute" = = * mine * -Kraftwerk = ============================================================================
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (05/03/90)
In article <12508@wpi.wpi.edu> macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) writes: >TM> Now, if they would put the Finder icons in windows, *that* would be >TM> a good feature! I'm so sick of using "Set Aside" just to do basic >TM> Finder operations! And most people don't even have that! > >What would that accomplish? The finder is always active under multifinder, >so it doesn't have to be launched... and you can easily go to the finder by >selecting the finder icon in the Apple Menu. What would accomplishes, gentlepersons, is that you could get to the &%$#*@! disk icons and the trash, which are on the desktop and obscured by the open windows of other applications. You currently must either resize the windows or use "set aside" to get at them. Tim would like to see the disk icons and trash in a window of their own, so they could be accessed without resizing or Set Aside. -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner
d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (05/03/90)
In article <12508@wpi.wpi.edu>, macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) writes: > What I think you're looking for is a Set Aside All (except finder of course) > feature, or a way for the finder to hide the desktop with all the open windows If you haven't been so blind on Suitcase II "shortening" the DA menu with option, you would have noticed the following: Get the apple menu. When it is displayed, try pressing and releasing the option key a few times. Neat, huh ? / h+ --- Stay alert ! - Trust no one ! - Keep your laser handy ! --- h+@nada.kth.se == h+@proxxi.se == Jon Watte longer .sig available on request
nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) (05/03/90)
In article <12508@wpi.wpi.edu>, macman@wpi (Chris Silverberg) writes: >TM> Now, if they would put the Finder icons in windows, *that* would be >TM> a good feature! I'm so sick of using "Set Aside" just to do basic >TM> Finder operations! And most people don't even have that! > >What would that accomplish? The finder is always active under multifinder, >so it doesn't have to be launched... and you can easily go to the finder by >selecting the finder icon in the Apple Menu. But you can't get at the $%^&#@ icons if another application has a window over them, since they stay on the desktop! I'm all for making the icons *into* windows, myself, so that they float with the rest of the Finder's layer. >- Chris Nick. Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk <Atlantic Ocean>!mcsun!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ Ich weiss jetzt was kein Engel weiss
tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) (05/04/90)
nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) writes: >I'm all for making the icons *into* windows, myself, so that they >float with the rest of the Finder's layer. I totally agree. I haven't tried this "setaside" feature, as I'm "only" at 6.0.4, but I do believe that the one thing that bugs me more than anything under the multifinder is that the disk icons don't come to the front when I bring the finder up on top of one or more applications. -tih -- Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, NHH, Bergen, Norway. Telephone: +47-5-959205 tih@barsoom.nhh.no, thelbekk@norunit.bitnet, edb_tom@pluss.nhh.no
barr@Apple.COM (Ron Barr) (05/04/90)
>nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) writes: >>I'm all for making the icons *into* windows, myself, so that they >>float with the rest of the Finder's layer. Do what I do - put all of your files on the desktop into a folder, and then keep the folder open. They then float with the Finder. Also, if you name the folder "Desktop Folder" interesting things will happen when you upgrade to System 7. Ron
kenney@hsi.UUCP (Brian Kenney) (05/04/90)
In article <40726@apple.Apple.COM> barr@Apple.COM (Ron Barr) writes: >Also, if you name the folder "Desktop Folder" interesting things will >happen when you upgrade to System 7. >Ron You teaser!!!! :-) :-) :-) Bri -- Brian Kenney kenney@hsi.com !uunet!hsi!kenney
werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig) (05/04/90)
In article <40726@apple.Apple.COM> barr@Apple.COM (Ron Barr) writes: > >>nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) writes: >>>I'm all for making the icons *into* windows, myself, so that they >>>float with the rest of the Finder's layer. > >Do what I do - put all of your files on the desktop into a folder, and then >keep the folder open. They then float with the Finder. > that doesn't serve my needs at all: I use the FindFile DA a lot, move the files to the DeskTop and later use Put Away to move them back where they came from. If I put them into another folder I can't put them back where they (originally) came from ...
zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston) (05/05/90)
There is an "icon dock" program called _Launch floating around, done by LunarMoBiscuit at Carnegie Mellon. Version 2.5 even avoids crashing much of the time... :-) -- "It's all about Power, it's all about Control All the rest is lies for the credulous" -- Man-in-the-street interview in Romania one week after Ceaucescu execution.
ted@cs.utexas.edu (Ted Woodward) (05/05/90)
In article <40726@apple.Apple.COM> barr@Apple.COM (Ron Barr) writes: >Do what I do - put all of your files on the desktop into a folder, and then >keep the folder open. They then float with the Finder. >Also, if you name the folder "Desktop Folder" interesting things will >happen when you upgrade to System 7. >Ron Ron, there is a bit of a problem there: "The trash cannot be duplicated or moved off the desktop" "Disks can only be moved onto other disks" I can understand the former, but why the latter? If I want to copy my floppy into a folder on my HD, I should only have to drag it there, not drag it to the root, and then to the folder... And, speaking of trash, is there any way to change the location of the trash? I'd like to move it to the bottom of the window (the VERY bottom) so it peaks out from under my term windows. I tried Layout 1.9, and looked at the LAYO resource with ResEdit, but can't find anything. PLEASE include this in Finder 7! -- Ted Woodward (ted@cs.utexas.edu) Someone shot the food...
edgar@shape.mps.ohio-state.edu (Gerald Edgar) (05/05/90)
How about an "icon dock" (or list of selected applications) in the Apple
menu? It seems I already have that...
--
Gerald A. Edgar
Department of Mathematics Bitnet: EDGAR@OHSTPY
The Ohio State University Internet: edgar@mps.ohio-state.edu
Columbus, OH 43210 ...!{att,pyramid}!osu-cis!shape.mps.ohio-state.edu!edgartim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (05/06/90)
>>TM> Now, if they would put the Finder icons in windows, *that* would be >>TM> a good feature! I'm so sick of using "Set Aside" just to do basic >>TM> Finder operations! And most people don't even have that! In article <12508@wpi.wpi.edu> macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) writes: >>What would that accomplish? The finder is always active under multifinder, >>so it doesn't have to be launched... and you can easily go to the finder by >>selecting the finder icon in the Apple Menu. In article <1990May2.220210.7333@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) writes: >What would accomplishes, gentlepersons, is that you could get to the &%$#*@! >disk icons and the trash, which are on the desktop and obscured by the open >windows of other applications. You currently must either resize the windows or >use "set aside" to get at them. > >Tim would like to see the disk icons and trash in a window of their own, so >they could be accessed without resizing or Set Aside. Precisely -- thanks, Steve. I thought this would be so obvious to any MultiFinder user that I didn't spell it out in detail. What's especially frustrating is that Apple's own application rules require that applications *not* do what the Finder does, putting graphics and user interface elements into the desktop. The reason is perfectly obvious to anyone who has ever needed to trash a file or open a disk with another application open on a normal-sized screen. There are three good solutions, both of which involve Apple obeying its own rules by putting the icons into windows. One involves the obvious -- opening a normal document-type window from the Finder which contains the icons, but has no close box. You will be able to do this for yourself using aliases in System 7.0, but most people won't realize that -- it should be the default behavior. Solution 2 is to have a new window definition procedure which makes windows out of icons. This way, the visual appearance of the Finder will not change at all, but the icons will come to the top of the screen whenever the Finder becomes the frontmost application, again obviating the need to "Set Aside" or similar awful and inefficient workarounds. This is arguably the best solution. Solution 3 is to make the Finder a HyperCard/MacPaint style application which takes the whole screen for itself, keeping everything in a single layer that is invisible when any other application is frontmost. This is a tolerable solution, but it makes switching to and from the Finder more difficult than it should be. -- Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
sho@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu (Sho Kuwamoto) (05/06/90)
In article <11313@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >>>TM> Now, if they would put the Finder icons in windows, *that* would be >>>TM> a good feature! I'm so sick of using "Set Aside" just to do basic >>>TM> Finder operations! And most people don't even have that! When I first read this, I thought, "Yeah, why don't we put some SICNs in the title bars of windows..." Then I realized what you were saying. "Icons the Finder uses should be placed in their own windows," not "Let's put a program's Finder Icon in its window." Still, I think it would be an interesting thing to try. -Sho -- sho@physics.purdue.edu <<-- of course, a SICN just *barely* fits into the title bar...
keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) (05/07/90)
In article <11313@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: > >There are three good solutions, both of which involve Apple obeying its >own rules by putting the icons into windows. Where's the rule that says icons have to be in windows? There's the rule that says that you shouldn't draw to the desktop, but the reason for this is precisely because the Finder is already using it for its own purposes. >Solution 2 is to have a new window definition procedure which makes >windows out of icons. This way, the visual appearance of the Finder >will not change at all, but the icons will come to the top of the >screen whenever the Finder becomes the frontmost application, again >obviating the need to "Set Aside" or similar awful and inefficient >workarounds. This is arguably the best solution. This is a solution that I tried to push for about a year ago. I thought that it would be really neat to have a window whose strucRgn was the outline of the icon. Then you could do sicko things like call DragWindow when you needed to move the icon around. However, it was pointed out to me that there were problems with this, indeed, with any scheme that allows icons to float all over the place. The problem is that any such floating icons would look like they appeared in any windows that were behind them. (This is aside from the obvious problem that you couldn't call DragWindow if you wanted to move more than one icon at a time.) For example, say my name was Pete Helme, and that I liked to put tons of applications and documents on my desktop. It would be possible, then, that those icons would appear to actually be in any open Finder windows beneath them. When the user later moved or closed the window, they'd get really confused when the icon stayed behind. So, OK. How about this then? Say we had some sort of...oh, let's call it a Layer Manager, for the lack of a better name. Then, we could make it so that all normal Finder windows would appear in the top layer, but that desktop icons would appear beneath them, but still above all other applications. Then you still have the problem of icons appearing to be in the windows of those other applications. I know that a lot of people wouldn't get too confused if they saw an icon in their MPW worksheet, but they might if they saw it in their MacDraw or MacPaint pictures. Still, I pushed the issue. "OK," I said, "how about if you made the icons really distinct, like, by putting a grey border around them. Fill out the 32x32 bit image with a grey background." However, this suffers in that a) there may not be the ability to do that if the icon takes up the entire 32-bit image, and b) you'd have to make sure you did the right thing when the user did things like have a color background, or picture desktop through some INIT. So, as you can see, there are more issue here than meets the eye. I haven't even listed all of the ones we've encountered. But you can be sure that we've looked into this a lot and have found the status quo to be better than the proposed change. I mean, what other excuse could we have? That we're lazy? Sheesh, we're rewriting the whole g**d*** Finder from scratch! Can that be characterized as lazy? That we don't know how to do it? I think that the solutions Tim iterated would be obvious to anyone. The only reason for our not doing it is that we tried it, and found it to be lacking. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keith Rollin --- Apple Computer, Inc. --- Developer Technical Support INTERNET: keith@apple.com UUCP: {decwrl, hoptoad, nsc, sun, amdahl}!apple!keith "Argue for your Apple, and sure enough, it's yours" - Keith Rollin, Contusions