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From: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: statement
Message-ID: <1107@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 15-Dec-86 01:18:45 EST
Article-I.D.: spice.1107
Posted: Mon Dec 15 01:18:45 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 18:36:48 EST
Reply-To: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi)
Distribution: net
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 79

Keywords:


I agree with Matt's sentiments.  The performance of the workbench is
simply too slow for it to be considered a viable user interface.  I
personally dislike listening to my drive grind and the 2-second delay
between each individual appearance of an icon in a window.  I hate
being bothered with a bunch of .info files lying around in my
directory cluttering up the listing of the important stuff there.  I
especially don't like the fact that the Workbench totally ignores
files without .info files -- making it look to the workbench user that
a disk or directory could be totally empty when in fact it is loaded
with files.

In short, I think the Workbench is ill-designed at best.  The
Macintosh Finder provides its services in a consistent, quick manner.
I'm not saying that the best design is an emulation of Apple's.  What
I am saying is that the following issues need to be addressed:

	1) The performance of the Workbench needs to be accelerated
	   tremendously.  I haven't seen 1.2 in action yet, but under
	   1.1 I don't understand how the novice could tolerate its
	   slowness, let alone the experienced user (read: hacker).

	2) The Workbench needs to be more consistent.  There should be
	   an icon for every file in the system when the user opens a
	   window.  Everything that the CLI can see the Workbench
	   should also be able to see.

	3) There should be some sort of mechanism to allow the
	   Workbench to pass CLI-type arguments to its programs.
	   True, the novice user does not need this and should
	   probably be shielded from it, but hackers like me would
	   take the Workbench seriously if this feature existed.

How to implement these features/improvements?

The icons could be speeded up by putting them all in one file in each
directory...or in a great big file in the root directory.  Then you
could write utilities to install, copy and delete icons.  A file that
didn't explicitly have an icon definition in the "icon file" would be
given a default "vanilla" icon, sort of what the Mac does for files it
has no specific definitions for.

The argument-passing mechanism could be implemented as a string gadget
that appears only when the icon is opened when the new option "Open
with Args" is selected instead of "Open" from the "Workbench" menu.
Additionally, Preferences could set a default parameter that would
pop up the arugment string gadget by default when an icon is
double-clicked. 

When the capability to run CLI programs is added to Workbench,
Workbench users will be able to access the full power of the machine
in a friendly manner.  They won't have to mess around with atrocities
like the Workbench DiskCopy which copies a disk in 8 swaps (even when
you have an external drive! -- it assumes you use drive 0 only) when
the CLI version does it in 3.

Default icons for "tools" and "projects" will immediately reduce the
number of icons kept around, as every file will no longer require its
own individual icon description to be recognized by Workbench.  If a
custom definition does not exist, the default is used -- and the
system only reads ONE file to determine this information for EVERY
program in the directory!  The image of the default icons could be
changed with IconEd or Preferences (the same way Preferences now
allows you to change the mouse pointer).

As it is, the current Workbench has enough holes in it that I would
label it as unsuitable for the novice user.

-- 

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Mike Portuesi								     |
| Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department		     |
|									     |
| ARPA: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu						     |
| UUCP: {harvard | seismo | ucbvax | decwrl}!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp	     |
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| "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture"		     |
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