Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Hey Apple Mac engineers, answer->MacWorld Interview Answers you.
Keywords: multitasking, improvements
Message-ID: <14916@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 8 Aug 89 19:14:55 GMT
References: <14845@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <27159@srcsip.UUCP> <21857@dcatla.UUCP>
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Thayer School of Engineering
Lines: 23

In article <21857@dcatla.UUCP> mclek@sunb.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar) writes:
...
>I don't know about PM, but I use Macs and Amigas both quite a bit.  I can
>tell the difference (I'm a tech writer, not a programmer):
>
>	- The Mac dialog boxes lock out *all* user input to tasks or windows
>	  other than the dialog box itself.  What if I want to pull up the
>	  on-line documentation to help me decide what to set in the dialog?
>	  This is a BIG malfeature of Multifinder.

     This not a fault of the Mac, but of the programmer who programmed
the dialog.  Mac dialogs can be set up to be totally modal, as you
describe, or to be modeless, i.e. just like any other window.  It is
more work for the programmer to write programs which use modeless
dialogs, not much more work, but a little more.  It is modal dialogs,
not dialogs per se, which lock you out under MultiFinder, and 99% of
the time, you have some lazy application programmer to thank for it.

     I am rather surprised at how many applications on the Mac use
modal dialogs where a modeless one would do, given the degree of user
frustration these things cause, and the small amount of labor saved.

Earle