Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!ctrsol!lll-winken!arisia!sgi!shinobu!odin!odin.corp.sgi.com!portuesi 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