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From: portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Clipboard support, and why it hasn't happened.
Message-ID: 
Date: 2 Oct 89 09:24:09 GMT
References: <8909250219.AA13930@jade.berkeley.edu> <899@madnix.UUCP>
	<1627@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US> <2057@leah.Albany.Edu>
Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM
Reply-To: portuesi@sgi.com (Michael Portuesi)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 72
In-reply-to: wfh58@leah.Albany.Edu's message of 29 Sep 89 15:20:25 GMT

In article <2057@leah.Albany.Edu> wfh58@leah.Albany.Edu (William F. Hammond) writes:

   In article <1627@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US>, swan@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (Joel Swan) writes:

   > IF IT DOESN'T SUPPORT CLIPBOARD BUT SHOULD- _I WON'T BUY IT_!!
   > 
   I agree.  Please note that an editor that uses the clipboard does not
   need to have a multi-windowing facility (i.e., does not need to reinvent
   the wheel).  You can open a document, take a clip, close that document,
   and go to another to insert the clip.  Editors that eliminate unnecessary
   features are smaller.


Sorry, but I would list multi-windowing as a basic capability of any
screen editor, whether it divides itself into panes, opens separate
intuition windows, or can be made resident so that you can run
multiple copies of it at the same time.

You see, it's very convenient to have multiple windows open, because
you can see more than one file at the same time, or different parts of
the same file at the same time.  Putting in Clipboard support isn't
going to replace this functionality.


   Note that under WorkBench 1.3 the clips don't have to be put in
   devs:clipboards.  Perhaps the fact that this was true in the past explains
   why some developers opted away from the clipboard facility.


I was under the impression that developers opted away from the
Clipboard because it was poorly documented, difficult to support, its
functionality could be provided with the ram disk, and its usefulness
is limited by external factors mentioned below.

This is not intended to be a flame against the Clipboard.  I would
like to see Clipboard support in all programs myself.  Though if the
Clipboard is to be truly successful, the following things must happen:


	* There needs to be more IFF standards for things such as 2D 
	  structured drawings and multifont text (Yes, I know about
	  FTXT, but how many applications actually use it?).

	* There needs to be system support for handling all IFF
	  formats (in the form of an iffparse.library, followed by
	  separate libraries for handling each specific IFF type) that
	  applications can depend on using.


The big reason the Mac clipboard is useful is that not only does every
application support it, there are standard definitions for text,
bitmaps and drawings, along with system ROM support for handling these
formats.  The Amiga has standards for some of these formats, but not
all of the useful ones, plus no standard system support for any of
these formats.

Exchanging information between applications is no good unless the
applications know what to do with it.  People who are wondering why
applications don't support the Clipboard are only looking at part of
the overall picture.


				--M


--
__
\/  Michael Portuesi	Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc.
			portuesi@SGI.COM

"The best length for television programs is either 30 seconds or 8
hours." David Byrne