Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!ames!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!sys.uea!jrk
From: jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway CMP RA)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 7.0 speculations - Feature wishlist
Message-ID: <682@sys.uea.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Aug 89 07:03:08 GMT
References: <587GDAU100@BGUVM> <19201@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU> <656@sys.uea.ac.uk> <824@eutrc3.urc.tue.nl>
Reply-To: jrk@uea-sys.UUCP (Richard Kennaway)
Organization: University of East Anglia, Norwich
Lines: 68

In article <824@eutrc3.urc.tue.nl> rcbaem@eutrc3.urc.tue.nl (Ernst Mulder) writes:
>In article <656@sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@uea-sys.UUCP (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>>When an application (the Finder or any other) is in the foreground, all
>>its graphic objects should be in the foreground.  Obvious, yes?

>Is this obvious? Yes. But all those Application's graphical objects are
>stored in Windows, and the Finder ICONs are in fact part of the DeskTop
>itself. It wouldn't be consistent when those would come in front of other
>Applications.

That statement about the Finder's ICONs is really about the implementation
(which I dont care about), not the user interface.  When I look at the
screen, I interpret the Finder's ICONs as like closed books.  When I
close a book on a physical desk, it doesnt suddenly vanish underneath
all the open books and papers.  It only vanishes if I put something else
on top of it.

>Applications. (Would't even be convenient, how many times, you imagine, 
>will you accidentally activate an Application instead of hitting a Disk
>ICON and miss it?)

I dont understand the problem you're describing here.

> A more consistent solution would be to put the Disk and Trash ICONs in
>a special window, which switches to the Front together with all other
>Finder objects. This window could be graphical, with ICONs or could be
>a simple LIST item with names. (User selectable?) Users could even be
>allowed to turn the whole option on and off, to preserve the old well-known
>interface.

And put all the other desktop icons there, and allow all the usual View
options for this "desktop window".  This is, I suppose, the easy solution
(in terms of implementation), but I'm not very enthusiatic about it.
When I turn on my Mac in the morning, I see a subdued grey desktop, with
twenty-odd icons scattered around the edges, and no open windows.  Looks
tidier than having them all in an open window of their own, and makes a
pleasing contrast with my physical desktop :-).  But that's a matter of
taste.

Surely the real reason for the Finder icons being glued to the desktop
is that before MultiFinder, it was reasonable to implement them that way -
just draw them directly on the desktop, instead of having another sort
of graphical object to manage.  Since MultiFinder, this doesnt work so
well, from the user's point of view, but might require a lot of work
to change.  (Anyone at Apple care to comment on these speculations,
made from a position of total ignorance?)

> How about that?   Ernst.

How about this:

Someone posted a WDEF a while ago to give you a window which turns into
an icon when it's shrunk below a certain size.  As far as the Window
Manager is concerned, it's still a window, but for the user it's an icon
that floats in the same layer as all the application's un-iconised
windows.  I've got a little text editor that I might install this in,
to see what it actually feels like to have floating icons.  But I wouldnt
expect any problems.

--
Richard Kennaway          SYS, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
uucp:  ...mcvax!ukc!uea-sys!jrk		Janet:  kennaway@uk.ac.uea.sys

Mac tip no. 257 (swap them with your friends! collect the whole set!):
If you use the default grey desktop pattern, try using the Control Panel
to invert every pixel of the pattern.  Result: when you click-drag on the
desktop in the Finder, or drag a window of any application, the dotted
outline appears in white instead of black.  Much more visible.