From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Date: 4 Jan 1993 21:14:04 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33

In article <C0BJCq.MK9@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>   My beef with AmigaOS as a whole is that it seems to be crafted oppositely
>to the MacOS.  The Mac OS is not very pretty under the surface, but is VERY

This would be the LAST beef I would EVER have.

>elegant on the surface.  The Mac OS on the surface has lots and lots of 
>niceties, big and small. AmigaOS is more elegant under the surface, but is
>almost completely devoid of niceties on the surface.

Don't you see, though?  It's the underlying messiness that will screw
you over.  If you're designed well under the hood, the surface is
easily mottled to conform to any will.  When your underlying stuff is
bad, EVERYTHING is bad.

Why do you think we still have to deal with BCPL?  Fixing stuff on the
surface is 10x easier than fixing the underlying stuff--elegance under
the hood is important because trying to fix bad bottom code will give
you lots of headaches, incompatibilities, and kludges.

>   Let's face it, on the surface AmigaOS needs lots and lots of work.  The
>Amiga clipboard is almost completely non-functional compared to the Macintosh 
>clipboard.  ConClip needs lots of work to be very useful (it needs to support
>more than just console devices, and needs lots of other fine-tuning; 
>double-clicking on a word should highlight the whole word, for instance.  You
>shouldn't have to drag across the whole word to highlight it).  The Workbench

Having ConClip more advanced would be nice.  I think C= should also
give you some kind of "tool" with which to manage the clipboard, too.

Plug, plug.  Wait till 3.0 is released.  Plug, plug.  It's all
ClipManager's been waiting for.  :)

>has so many problems it needs to be thrown away and replaced.  Box-selecting
>is totally broken.   When you move one icon in a window, all icons in that
>window flash four times for every icon that is moved, the Workbench lacks

I'll agree with this, the Workbench is in definite need of a rewrite.
In particular, it sure would be nice if they'd write it REENTRANT, and
make more use of threads.  :)

>iconic representations of tasks started by the Workbench (both OS/2 and
>Windows have this, and it is nice); except for the rare program that puts an
>AppIcon on the screen, and in this case the AppIcons are mixed with the file
>and directory icons, making everything very confusing to the novice user. 

Think of it this way:  Having each task have an icon on the workbench
should be handled by that program creating an AppIcon, and not by the
workbench, because any program that opened an AppIcon of its own would
have TWO icons representing it.

Workbench supporting a "dock" would be nice.

Even better would be added functions to icon.library to support other
programs using icons.  :)

>CrossDOS is very poorly implemented in 2.1 and 3.0, with a disk in a drive
>having totally different device names depending on whether that disk is in
>AmigaDOS or IBM format.  Also, with CrossDOS enabled, there are almays two
>'disk' icons on the screen for every disk in every drive.  Very, very messy.  

CrossDOS needs to be more smoothly integrated into the system, agreed.

>   On the surface, the Macintosh works very well.  The way the Apple Menu is
>available from any program is very nice.  When you launch any program, a

I'd like to see a "screen" menu, actually...

>description for that program is always available by selecting the "About"
>entry in the Apple menu.  The 'Edit' menu is similarly always available from
>any program, so that nearly all programs support cutting and pasting with 
>the clipboard.  The Multifinder menu is also always available from any program,

That's why we have a Style Guide.

>allowing easy navigating through the Macintosh's approximate equivelent to
>the Amiga's screens.  The Finder is full of little niceties that you hardly

Well, this is debatable...

>ever really notice, except when you use something (like the Amiga's
>Workbench) that is devoid of them.  Things such as box-selecting that works
>well (you never have to transfer your attention from the mouse to the
>keyboard to box-select and drag icons).  Icons don't flash when they are 
>moved.  The Mac's 3-D Look supports the entire 16-Million-color palette on 
>color Macs; the Amiga's 3-D Look still uses a 4096-color palette even on
>AGA Amigas.  Multiple icon sets are available in the system, so that the

Beg your pardon?  Happen to know what pens are?  The Amiga's 3-D look
is defined by them, and under 3.0, they're extremely selectable.

Don't make the mistake of thinking 3.0 is just 2.1 with AGA support in
graphics.library.

>Finder looks great on monochrome Macs, and even better on color Macs; the
>Amiga's stock Workbench icons look horrible in monochrome, and support only
>four colors even on Amigas that can display a 256-color Workbench; the
>Amiga's stock icons are also drawn from a 4096-color palette, and not from
>a 16-million-color palette.

The Amiga's system of default icons does need to be expanded upon, and
it would be nice to see more support.  Though I still have no clue as
to what you're talking about with this 4096-color palette thing.  If
you've got AGA, the system knows it.

>   I could go on and on and on.  The Amiga is still a rather ugly child on the
>surface, and is in dire need of some radical cosmetic surgery.  I am basing
>all of this on extensive first-hand experience with AmigaOS 2.1 on an Amiga
>3000.  Some of the problems could be solved with only minor modifications to
>the Amiga OS.  For instance, the last of support by the Workbench for a visual
>record of Workbench-launched tasks could be solved by integrating the main
>Commodities Exchange tool with the Workbench, and making each CX task show up
>on the Workbench screen's root as an icon instead of as a string in a tool's
>window (as it is now).  But many of the other problems (such as the Amiga's

All in all, a very nice idea.  Which could really be done if someone
would simply write their own Commodities Exchange.  An interesting
idea, to say the least.  There's no need to integrate it into the
system, it can do what you want without that.  One would just have to
write it differently, that's all.

>completely non-functional clipboard) may not be solvable.

I wouldn't even say it's remotely completely non-functional.  I think
you're way off base with that.  It just needs MORE.  It is extremely
powerful, and it's only getting better.

>   But, all in all, Commodore needs to pay *MUCH* more atrention to the 
>surface details.  As the Macintosh has shown, what's under the surface does 
>not matter as much if the outside looks really good.

I'm just surprised to hear this from ANY CS student.

Greg
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