Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!cmcl2!esquire!sbb
From: sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: 'Virtual' Folders - good idea!!
Message-ID: <442@esquire.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jun 88 19:41:37 GMT
References: <8806161351.AA09732@decwrl.dec.com> <430031@hpcea.CE.HP.COM> <6082@dcatla.UUCP>
Reply-To: sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten)
Organization: DP&W, New York, NY
Lines: 36

In article <6082@dcatla.UUCP> dxjsb@sunb.UUCP (Jack S. Brindle) writes:
>The subject of 'Virtual Folders has been very interesting, but
>there are some ramifications that are being missed. What happens
>when the user faces a 'mini-finder' dialog such as that displayed
>by SFGetFile? He will still see every file in the 'real' directory,
>plus all those in the 'Virtual' directories. This does not alleviate
>the cluttered directory problem at all.

One would hope that the entire modal "mini-Finder" idea will go away soon.
In case anyone hasn't noticed, it's kind of a kludge, especially in the age
of MultiFinder.  Since Apple is going to be rewriting things, it would be
a good idea to take another look at how HFS is interacted with from within
an application; the narrow, claustrophobic view of your disk the mini-Finder
gives you (i.e., where am I in relation to other directories?  what are
some of my sibling directories, etc.) worked well for the original Mac, but
ever since HFS and large hard disks, it's been kind of a hack.  I won't
miss it.

On the other hand, I just saw a demo of Open Look at Usenix (it was strictly
hand's off, though, since from what I understand if you sneeze it crashes),
and the Sun rep was touting the hideous user-interface.  One thing she was
proud of in particular was an "Open..." dialog box that has a push-pin
in it so it stays around after the file is opened (i.e., becomes non-modal).
This is wonderful, I guess, but what was more interesting to me was why,
after the Mac has been around for 4 years already, you had to *type in*
the name of a file (i.e., no scrolling list of appropriate files).  She
didn't have any good answer to that, except to say that the interface
"wasn't finalized" yet.

So people in Mac-land shouldn't gripe too much.  Apple did a *fine* job and
is still way ahead of the pack in many areas.

-- 
   Steve Baumgarten             | "New York... when civilization falls apart,
   Davis Polk & Wardwell        |  remember, we were way ahead of you."
   ...!cmcl2!esquire!sbb        |                           - David Letterman