From: don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Date: 4 Jan 93 22:10:02 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware


 barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) babbles:

>   Commodore has already ripped box selecting and the 3.0 palette tool from
>the Apple Macintosh.  Why stop there?

      Let me get this straight.  After umpteen posts about how the
Amiga should become more like the Mac, you now turn around and say that
it's wrong for CBM to do this?  Your inconsistency has reached new heights.

      (Not to mention that fact that there's not a whole lot to be "ripped"
from the Mac that wasn't in use somewhere else first...)

>>>   Another feature that is totally broken on the Amiga is launching of 
>>>applications by double-clicking a project.  On the Macintosh, when you
>>
>>     Funny, it works for me.  Must only be broken on your system.
>
>   What happens if you give a text file a project icon, enter "c:more" in
>the tooltypes for the icon, and "more" is not in the "c:" directory?  Do
>you get an "Unanble to open your tool 'c:more'" requester?  This does not
>happen on the Macintosh.

     You said it was _totally_ _broken_.  That implies to me that it
does not, under any circumstances, function at all.  "CDTV is dead" 
implies to me that Commodore has stopped selling CDTVs and has activated
a remote self-destruct mechanism to obliterate all the existing units.
Neither of those statements of yours are even remotely true.
     Besides, I avoid "more"... I just drag & drop it (hope I don't miss!)
onto an appicon to view it....

>>     Hmmm... double-clicking is "totally broken", or so you said before, but
>>now you're saying it works if you've got the file in the right place?
>
>   If something works in a few cases, that does not necessarily mean that it
>isn't broken.  

     But it does mean it's not _totally_ _broken_.  It works fine under most
conditions and is easily fixable (though tough for beginners) when it
doesn't.

>>      I'd prefer it f more folks just put a tool name (sans full path) into
>>project icons.  That way when the icon is clicked it will search the current
>>directory and the path for the appropriate tool.  This seems to be a 
>>reasonable solution.
>
>   That would not fix any of the archives on the nearly 800 Fish disks, that
>already have projects with hard-coded paths for the needed utilities.  
>Soething needs to be added to the OS so that the OS can go searching for a
>utility if it isn't found in the hard-coded path in a project's tooltypes.
>

     I only suggested it as a way to avoid the problem, not a way to fix all
previous occurences of it.

>>[TeachText, NotePad, and AmigaGuide stuff deleted]
>>
>>     It's my understanding that via datatypes in 3.0 AmigaGuide can be
>>(is being, will be... something along those lines) extended to handle sound,
>>graphics, etc.
>
>   Will this extended AmigaGuide and all of the needed support files to
>handle graphics and sound be made standard software with the Amiga?  The
>nice thing about Macintosh TeachText is that it is ready-to-go.  You can 
>read a document with text and color graphics immediately after using the
>computer for the first time, without having to set anything up.
>

     AmigaGuide.library is part of 3.0 and AmigaGuide documents can be viewed
with the included MultiView utility.

>>     Well, what about those under-the-surface features like pre-emptive
>>multitasking?  That's definitely "completely broken" on the Mac,
>
>   I've already admitted that, but this is comp.sys.amiga, after all.  And
>this is a discussion of the problems of the Amiga OS.  Besides, Apple manages
>to sell three times as many Macintoshes as Commodore sells Amigas, every
>year, in spite of the inelegance of the underlying Mac OS.  This shows how
>much Commodore needs to shift their priorities from the underlying OS to
>what's on the surface.

     AS I believe Dan (no relation) pointed out, the strength of the
underlying OS is what makes the little niceties you're so concerned about
possible without horribly ugly kludges.

     The hardware and software folks at CBM seem to be doing a great job
these days.  Where priorities really need to be shifted is from 
corporate jets and executive bonuses to building a dealer base and
advertising.





-- 
Don Lloyd                / "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of \
don@chopin.udel.edu      | another computer is a kludge.  It has nothing to do |
GeNIE: D.LLOYD7          \ with the Intel CPU"  - Jerry Shekhel                /
BIX: DRL  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy