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From: root@mentat.UUCP (doug)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Next Amiga?
Message-ID: <132@mentat.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Dec-86 13:56:04 EST
Article-I.D.: mentat.132
Posted: Sat Dec 27 13:56:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Dec-86 23:35:44 EST
References: <23186@rochester.ARPA> <12299@watnot.UUCP> <617@fmsrl7.UUCP> <2063@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Summary: Amiga Future


The question was "is Unix really all that wonderful", and Mike Meyers
correctly points out that Unix documentation sucks and furthermore is
based on an obsolete paradigm -- that of files and streams.

But we can learn an important lesson from the ways in which Unix *is*
wonderful. Note that most people still prefer doing development under
Unix than under any other commonly available system. And the first thing
we ask for (or write) on the Amiga are Unix development tools. In the
abstract, what is good about Unix is that what it does, it does "right".
Everything is just a stream of characters, and everything from system
calls to utilities generically supports this (actually Unix is best at
supporting streams of *lines* of printable characters) in a pretty modular
way. This made it so much easier to get things done that a lot of people
wrote programs for it in the early Bell Labs days, which would have been
too annoying to develop otherwise. It is no coincidence that Unix has
the development tools programmers want...it is a direct result of the
ease of assembling standard parts, just like in Henry Ford's revolutionary
assembly line. Interchangeable standard off-the-shelf parts are really
the only thing that made automobiles accessible and affordable; same
thing with Winchester rifles earlier.  And this is what makes Unix great.
So any future systems/applications we do should similarly operate on a
generic model.

The IFF standard for the Amiga is a good example of how useful it is to
have everyone speaking the same language. Unfortunately we lack some
flexibility...I'm told that on the Mac, you can cut and paste gadgets as
generically as text, for example. And isn't it too bad that, icon/workbench
flames aside, icons and executables are not part of that generic IFF
model. What you really want is to be able to design a program that deals
with anything easily. Why do we need an icon editor when we've already
got a paint program? Because of this lack of unity between icons and IFF.
Ideally icons would be part of the IFF standard, instead of just including
a reference to an IFF picture. Why should it be impossible to have digitized
sound played when you click an icon? Or to see a closed-loop animation
when you click? Why can't you "pipe" an image through a filter before
it hits the screen, then redirect it to the printer? (This last could be
emulated by a special purpose program, of course, but note that such
services are not generically available.)

In summary, this is not about Unix wars or Workbench flames; it's about
a neat little machine with a lot of potential which is as yet unrealized.
Fortunately, the Amiga has (I think and I hope) what we need to build a
good modular system. Along with IFF, it also has virtual device drivers,
which helps. For examples of what you get from highly developed modularity,
look at Smalltalk's objects and messages, look at Hypertext, look at
Unix shell scripts using dozens of utilities to massage text.

I believe that this kind of approach is necessary to really make the Amiga
shine. Otherwise it'll go down in history as just yet another machine with
yet another operating system, and that would be a real shame.

	Doug Merritt	hoptoad!mentat!doug, pesnta!mentat!doug,
			ucbvax!unisoft!certes!mentat!doug