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From: cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: my previous "Re: statement"
Message-ID: <1696@vax135.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Dec-86 23:17:28 EST
Article-I.D.: vax135.1696
Posted: Mon Dec 15 23:17:28 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Dec-86 07:06:43 EST
References: <1108@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier)
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 50
Summary: Big file of icons, yes!  Globbing, yes!

I agree about Workbench being too slow and I like your (and Matt's)
ideas for improving icon behavior.  Let me suggest a tweak for
Worchbench arguments:  use Left-amiga-click as Open-with-arguments.
This can be an alternative to having to go to the Workbench menu, i.e.
support both methods.  The "big file of icons" seems like a big win to
me if one assumes that it is cached.  Then closing and opening drawers
that have once been opened becomes instantaneous.  (Or nearly; you may
have to check time of last dir modification.) Amiga needs to support
more caching-type ideas.  Memory is cheap and getting cheaper.  I've
seen Workbench windows where the whole drawer was in ram:, and those
things are FAST (if you can afford that much ram).  But if it's just
the icons in ram, you don't use much memory and still get great
response on opening the drawers.

In fact, how's this tweak: to save on memory used for the icon cache,
you can have a workbench menu command where you click on one of the
disk icons to delete it, AND its icon map.  Otherwise, all disks you've
used remain onscreen and their icons remain in-core.

Let's not forget, too, that if ALL files are represented in the icons
file, then one could use the icons file as a complete directory
listing.  No more need for all this grinding just to put up a file
requester!  Use the current directory scheme only for what it is
optimized for: single file access by (unglobbed) filename.

ARE YOU LISTENING, COMMODORE-AMIGA ?????!!!!!  If so, do you like it?

While I'm at it, let me add my vote in favor of uniform filename
expansion at the CLI level.  The comments on other kinds of expansion
are well taken, but I say that filenames are far and away the most
common form of globbing.  Let other realms of expansion use escapes or
quotes.  That amount of "inconsistency" is compensated by the security
of knowing that filename expansion WILL be done.  

By the way, this should be tweaked in a way that UNIX screws up: for
output-redirection, i.e. cmd >foo#?.  ALLOW globbing IF the expansion
results in ONE file name (error otherwise).  And does anyone besides me
miss APPEND redirection (UNIX >>)?  I thought so.  I'm not saying
"recreate UNIX", just "fix up AmigaDOS".

And then get the AmigaDOS commands to expect multiple args.  Heaven
forbid you should ever have a whole bunch of files in the wrong dir.
Ever try "rename files#? dir" like one can do on UNIX with mv?  It's
not bloody supported, nor is a loop such as "for i in files#? rename $i
dir".  You have to type out every one.  Unfriendly to the max!
Actually, a real "mv" command should support taking a batch of files
*off* one disk and moving them to another (deleting them from the first
disk).

	Charles Poirier  (USENET)!vax135!cjp