From: jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim)
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 19:07:08 GMT

ddulay@jarthur.claremont.edu (Daniel Dulay) writes:
>In article <1992Oct5.045310.15717@muddcs.claremont.edu> jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim) writes:

>[ lots of stuff deleted]

>I really don't see how your description of shadows is any different than
>the program objects you intend to replace.

My proposed shadows are exactly identical to program objects because
the are intended to replace them.  The sole difference is that it is
a shadow, meaning the icon name is a different color.  This makes it
really easy to tell when you're shredding a reference to a program,
and when you're shredding the actual program (the file on disk) itself.
It also makes it easy to set up programs on your desktop.  You don't
have to drag a program object off a template, you don't have to run
a utility that searches your disk for programs.  All you do is open
the drives object, find the program you want to set up, and drag a
shadow of it to the desktop.

>  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?

I'm not aware of how shadows work on the technical level, but the info
should be with the shadow.  A shadow should look and act like just another
program/file on disk, but it is a link to the real program/file.

>  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.

If you use just the actual program object, you're limited to just one
set of settings for each program.  But if you make shadows of a program,
each shadow should have its own set of settings.

Right now we have:

1. Actual program/file
2. Shadow of actual program/file
3. Desktop program/file object (acts just like a shadow but isn't,
                                and is slightly more configurable)
4. Shadow of desktop program/file (serves no purpose other than to
                                   save you the work of making another
                                   desktop program/file object)

Shredding the first deletes the real program/file.  Shredding any of
the others has no effect on the real program/file, which is confusing
since the third looks just like the first from the desktop.  Why not
just add the configurability of the third to the second and get rid
of the third and fourth altogether?

This dichotomy of stuff on the desktop vs. stuff on disk is really silly.
(it's one of the reasons Mac users laugh at Windows)
-- 
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)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.apps