From: ddulay@jarthur.claremont.edu (Daniel Dulay)
Subject: Re: Shredder vs. Trash (was: Why OS/2 **WILL** fail)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 06:19:17 GMT

In article <1992Oct5.045310.15717@muddcs.claremont.edu> jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim) writes:
>TW.FY4@isumvs.iastate.edu (Timothy I Miller) writes:
>
>>     Now, I'm a little confused on this whole deleting things from
>>the desktop thing.  If I have a program on the desktop, and drag it
>>to the shredder, is it being deleted from the disk, or is it just
>>being deleted from the desktop (like windows does)?
>
>This is my major gripe with the WPS right now.  It clings to the
>program objects introduced in Windows.  I think objects are great.
>But this is one place where they don't belong precisely because
>of the confusion Timothy mentions.
>
>How it works right now is that the objects in the drives object are
>the actual files.  If you drag one of them onto the shredder, you
>delete the real file.  Most of the stuff you see on the desktop (i.e.
>"OS/2 Programs" folder, "Productivity" folder, etc.) are program
>objects a la Windows Program manager.  All they are are icons that
>start up the program.  If you drag one of them onto the shredder,
>you only delete the program object, while the actual file still remains
>on your disk.
>
>How it SHOULD work (IMHO) is that no program objects are allowed.
>The only representations of the files on disk should be the file objects
>themselves (i.e. the stuff in the drives object).  If you need the
>equivalent of a program object on the desktop, instead of making a
>program object, you should be able to just make a shadow of the actual
>file object.  This shadow should be just as configurable as a program
>object (it isn't in GA - try renaming a shadow of an object in the
>drives object and look at the object's name) without affecting the
>actual object.  This way, if you drag a shadow to the shredder, you
>know you're just shredding a shadow.  And if you drag an actual file/
>program to the shredder, you know you're deleting the real file.  Simple.
>
[ some stuff deleted]

>The length of this explanation should be a tip-off that something is
>wrong with the way the WPS currently implements program and real objects.
>-- 
>John H. Kim                 | (This space to be filled when I
>jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever 
>uunet!jarthur!jokim         | to use as a disclaimer)

I really don't see how your description of shadows is any different than
the program objects you intend to replace.  With PM programs you'll notice
that there is very little that you can configure in the program object, so
I believe that program objects are a kludge used to get backward
compatibility w/ DOS and windows programs.  Do you believe that the
information currently in the program object should be integrated into the
file instead?  Currently program objects "exist" in the os2.ini file
(a very bad place IMHO).  I would prefer that this information be in the
EAs of the program file, and, for simplicity, that one could only have one
set of settings which would reside in these EAs.  This would severely
restrict how one could configure DOS and windows programs under OS/2 (one
of OS/2's best features I think), but I think it would make the WPS
more usable for the average computer user who doesn't want to look at
the settings at all.

Daniel Dulay
ddulay@jarthur.claremont.edu

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.apps