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From: wrs@k.cs.cmu.edu (Walter Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Control Panel vs. Chooser
Message-ID: <1170@k.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 22-Jun-87 17:30:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: k.1170
Posted: Mon Jun 22 17:30:44 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Jul-87 18:37:29 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 37

It seems to me that since the Control Panel is now fully extensible (nice
job, by the way), the Chooser is superfluous.  Why isn't there a "Printers"
cdev that lets you set the current printer (which darn well tells you what
printer you're already using, unlike the Chooser) and other cdevs for
whatever file servers, mail servers, or other weird stuff you install?

It seems that the difference in functionality between the Chooser and the
Control Panel is not at all well defined.  How does one decide where things
like "Startup Device" go?  You're choosing a startup device, right?  The
cdev just displays a list of startup devices, from which one is chosen,
right?  Sounds like a Chooser task to me.  Choosing which file server to use
seems just as valid in the Control Panel as in the Chooser.  When I first
used AppleShare, I wandered around for about five minutes trying to figure
out how to log in.  Never occurred to me to look in the Chooser.

The Chooser is a bunch of AppleTalk stuff added to Choose Printer, retaining
the serial port assignment task and adding near-arbitrary extension
capability with which all sorts of strange things are being added.  It seems
like these two extensible configuration-changing DAs are competing with each
other for functionality.  Remember when turning AppleTalk on and off bounced
around between the Control Panel and Choose Printer/Chooser?

Having both of these things seems like unnecessary confusion and, less
importantly, waste of the precious, arbitrarily limited DA space.

Now that I've said all this, I would be most interested if one of those
wonderful Apple people out there would ask the person who made the decision
to maintain this separation (or failed to make the decision to stop it) what
the rationale was.  Getting an answer would be an impressive boost for
Apple's building reputation for openness...

- Walt
-- 
      Walter Smith, Math/CS undergraduate, Carnegie-Mellon University
		    CS graduate student starting August!
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