Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp 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 | | | | "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture" | | --Laurie Anderson, "Home of the Brave" | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+