From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Date: 7 Jan 1993 00:09:38 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33

In article <C0GACp.FJq@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>   Niceties give you functionality.  For instance, the Amiga lacks a clipboard
>with all of the 'niceties' of the Mac clipboard.  So you cannot cut and paste
>structured graphics or fonts on an Amiga with all of the ease and
>functionality that you can on a Mac.  This is entirely a 'surface' issue on
>both systems, and it interferes with functionality on the Amiga.

Actually, you're about 50% wrong, and 50% underjudging the Amiga's
side.

First, I'm pretty sure it's like this on the Mac as WELL as the Amiga,
support for ANY type of clip is left to the application programmer.
Currently, 90% of the programs only support the form FTXT, the
formatted text, and then usually only the CHRS chunks.  It just so
happens that on the Mac, more programs more often support several
types.

However, on the Amiga's side, you've got 256 units to choose from.
You can't easily move things around from one to another,
unfortunately, and the market for a "clipboard manager" as on the mac
is small.  The PD market hasn't seen fit to bring anything out.  I'll
be releasing something once 3.0 is available to everyone that should
satisfy everyone's needs (it satisfies mine, at least), but it uses
Datatypes.  What we NEED is a datatype for more than just the few
things that exist--C= needs to put out a datatype for ALL of the
standard setups--a GOOD FTXT viewer, a GOOD ILBM type viewer, (both
which we have), a GOOD ANIM datatype, a GOOD DR2D datatype and source
for a DR2D datatype included in RKM: Libraries so programmers can
finally figure out how to USE these damn DR2D format objects and add
support for them, etc.

There is _NO, NO, NO_ reason to use that MINDLESS little hotlinks
facility.  Seriously.  Currently, the clipboard has support for
notification.  All we need is a type of "named unit" extension to give
a kind of "ID" to a unit (which can be done with the various AUTH
chunks and the like and shown in the "selector" which should be added
to ASL, perhaps) and some way to tell which clipboard units are in
use, and you've got something totally equivalent to HotLinks that
works in TWO directions, back AND forth.  Now application support
isn't as easy for this, and there should be a glue library to handle
some of the sticky work that will have to be done in each application,
but it could EASILY come to exist.

This would be a good solution to C= having their own inter-application
links, and is a lot more expandable, and would also make the clipboard
more powerful.  I was debating whether or not it would be a good idea
to add HotLinks support to ClipManager--you'd hotlink the clipboard to
a file, and whenever you changed the hotlink it would go into the
clipboard, or whenever you changed the clipboard it would go into the
hotlink.  I decided against it, I have no wish to support HotLinks.
1) It's highway robbery for the little it provides, and 2) I don't
believe it's the right thing to do.  IMHO, Pagestream should've
released HotLinks PD/GPL.  It would have made the existence of more
hotlinkable programs more likely.  Instead, they keep it as an
invisible man, an incredibly proprietary system which could do more
benefit as public.

I've given thought to writing just the system I talk about.  It could
EASILY be made to support networks just as easily as HotLinks could...


Boy, that went off topic.  Apologies abound.  Anyways, hopefully
you'll take a closer look at what CAN be done with the clipboard (I'd
advise some RKM's), not what IS being done.

Greg

--
(: (: (: (: Have you overdosed on smileys today?  Why NOT!?! :) :) :) :)
(: "Our father, who art in Iowa, Hollow be thy head, Thy ideas run    :)
(:  Thy will be done, At Commodore as it is at Apple"  -Dan Barrett   :)
(: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: () :) :) :) Wubba, the Dark Angel :)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy