From: johnsd2@lib106.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: What Apple's GUI is missing (was Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Reply-To: johnsd2@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 21:51:15 GMT

In article <dmeyers.717791813@mal-s2>, dmeyers@mal-s2.gatech.edu (Dave Meyers) writes:
|> >If you use Think C anyway, you can make generic command line apps
|> >wo/ problems; just use standard C calls.
|> 
|> That doesn't make these programs necessarily useful.  While it is
|> nice how Think C gives you a console, and even stdio redirection,
|> the stdio redirection is primitive.  And it remains quite difficult
|> to look up the command line options (which are sometimes necessary)
|> without being able to quickly type "command -?" to get some help.
|> This will be addressed in more detail shortly.

Whoa nelly, hang on there. That's me your quoting without attribution
up there, so let me just throw some context your way.

I was not suggesting you should go write apps that way, or that
such apps were nice, or that I wanted to use them. I dont, a GUI
version is far better IMHO.

Someone or other had said that the Mac toolbox made it HARD to write
non-GUI apps. I was just disputing this, not saying what it sounds
like I was saying up there. (in any case it isn't accurate; you cant
pipe or use command line options in THINK C. No command line)

|> >|> GUIs _are_ the future!  They are developing quickly and gaining features
|> >|> at an amazing rate.  Only Apple's GUI is not keeping up with this
|> >|> explosive growth.
|> 
|> >Is it not? Please defend this statement. Tell me what
|> >sorta great stuff is appearing in other GUIs that Apple is
|> >missing. Apples UI does change and improve over time, but
|> >not "explosively", as this would blow away any consistency
|> >in it.
|>
|> Drag and drop ACROSS APPLICATION WINDOWS.  Drag and drop is a vast
|> improvement over the capabilities of previous Mac finders, wherein
|> one had to select a bunch of files at once, which often required 
|> dragging them all to the desktop first, as well as the appropriate
|> application, if it was not the creator app.
|> 
|> The problem is that drag and drop even as it is now is quite primitive.
|> You don't have any control over the function of the d-n-d apps.  At
|> present, the vast majority of them simply open the file.  A couple
|> do other things, like Save-A-Tree (a GREAT app!), which prints them.
|>
[deletia- grep example. Good one]

|> On other platforms, (eg. the Sun running OpenWindows), one is able
|> to drag icons from the directory viewer DIRECTLY INTO THE ACTIVE
|> WINDOW OF ANOTHER APPLICATION.  So, one can open up the configuration
|> window of the above imagined grep-program, and while the config 
|> window is still on the screen, simply drop the icons representing
|> the batches of text files right into the 'hot spot' of that config
|> window.  This is not possible under the Mac GUI, and I believe that
|> it or something like it will be essential for the future development
|> of useful drag and drop type programs.

Yeah, this is truely nifty. NeXT can do it too, btw. I hear its comming
on the Macintosh too. (but I also hear Apple maybe wont document it.
Sometimes I wonder what Apple smokes.. :)

It is much more usefull, btw, if you can drap an icon (or whatnot)
ANYWERE, not just a hotspot. Beats an "import" menu item cold.

However, this isn't as explosive as I was expecting. Nice, but not
revolutionairy. My expectations were all worked up, now Im
dissapointed. :(

One mintor point you didn't consider: You can  still get the same
effect in the current MacOS, because the icon of the app is always
availiable. So set the settings, then drag&drop onto that icon.
Inter-app draging would be better tho.
 
-- 
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

These opinions have had all identifiying marks removed, and are untraceable.
You'll never know whose they are.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy