From: johnsd2@vccnw03.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT
Reply-To: johnsd2@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 01:51:18 GMT

In article <genq56e00WBOA2PJBN@andrew.cmu.edu>, cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu (Carl B Jabido) writes:
[deletia- CUA description]
|> About Multiple Document Interface, or MDI, I think I'd rather do without
|> it.  It's okay for small resolutions, like 640x480, but at 1024x768 with
|> a 17 inch screen, it just gets complicated.  I'd rather be able to
|> organize my screen by document, rather than application.  For example,
|> if I'm working on a document such as a newsletter, or presentation,
|> it'll contain graphics, text, numbers, spreadsheets, etc.  With a Mac or
|> NeXT, I could put all the parts of the document in one section of the
|> screen, say the upper left corner.  Then I could also work on another
|> document, say a lab report, with all the documents in the lower right
|> corner.  Everything is organized by what I'm working on.  With MDI,
|> however, everything is organized by what I'm working WITH.  That means
|> that all the spreadsheets that are open are all in the lower left
|> corner, all the text I'm working on is in the upper left, pictures are
|> in the upper right etc.  I think this is a major obstacle to the
|> object-oriented aspects of CUA 1991.  One of the major tenets of CUA
|> 1991 is that people work with documents, stationary, templates etc, NOT
|> with applications.  (For example, there is no quit option for CUA 1991
|> apps, because you can't "quit" an object.  However, you can close that
|> particular "view" of the object.)
|> MDI makes people work by application, NOT document. Score one for MACs
|> and -1 for IBM for breaking their own guidelines.

Well, I agree I just dont quite see how OS/2 does it. Incidentally,
MacOS organizes documents into "layers", so that if you bring forward any
one document in any app, all the other docs in that app come up
behind it. So score 1/2 for the Mac.

Perhaps you could describe how to make a new document, open an old one,
launch an app (if this is meaningfull), etc...

[deletia- inconsistent PM chart]
|>   
|> > Lastly, how do the notebooks work in apps?
|> 
|> Here's how a basic notebook is setup.  You see the analog of a notebook
|> folded in half (on some, even complete with the metal wire binding). 
|> Along the side, just like a notebook, there are tabs.  The tabs let you
|> select different options you can changes.  For example, to elaborate on
|> the Country settings notebook discussed in some other section, the tabs
|> along the side are named: Country, Time, Date, Numbers, and General. 
|> The Country setting page lets you choose what country you're in, Time
|> allows you specify the time format, Date, the date format, etc.  General
|> is in all notebooks and is the page for the title of the app, and the
|> Icon. 

I understand how notebooks work; I want to know how they connect
to apps. Ar ethey one of the selections you can bring up with
the right button?

[deletia Finder != Kumquat so WPS != Rutabega]
[deletia- u gotta have Lan Manager]
[deletia- How AppleTalk works]
|> 
|> Okay, I agree with you here.  Seeing it that way, OS/2 should have had
|> built-in networking.  But, there's not much we could do about that.  

Well, there's not much I can do to make the MacOS pre-emptive. So there!
:P

|> > But you never ran into stationary? Poor you. [ps tossing around
|> > anecdotes about how unstable Macs are wont do a thing to convinces
|> > us happy Mac user types, you know.]
|> 
|> [ps- I'm not trying to convince anyone, if it works for you fine, but
|> macs hate me.  I'm just trying to defend my system]

Thats alright, I do that too. Its just that interjecting such an
anecdote where it has no bearing is begging for a responce. :)

|> > Stationary is a document which loads into an untitled window as if it was
|> > new. An example: I like to write in New York 12 point text, double spaces
|> > (Im just such a rebel that way... :) ); So I have a stationary document
|> > on my desktop. Its just an empty document, with New York 12 point, double
|> > spaced as the current font, style and spacing, but its saved as "stationary"
|> > [in the save-as dialog]; when I double click it my word processor loads and
|> > I get an untitled document which has those current settings. So I can go
|> > type, wo/ messing with the font, size, etc.
|> 
|> Okay, I vaguely remember this, it's just that I never really used them. 
|> I never had my own Mac; I used them in one of the computer clusters, so
|> I didn't really play around with it.

Blech. I have never seen Macs in computer clusters configured
well. But I guess its just personal preference.

|> Anyway, stationary sounds a lot like a template, but a template isn't
|> defined by the application-it's defined by the operating system.  All
|> files have a checkbox for template in their settings notebook.  It gets
|> kind of dangerous though, because you can define a .dll as a template. 
|> Then, when you double click it, the system won't know what created it. 
|> Of course, you're not "supposed" to do this, but you can, and so it's an
|> error.

Bleah. Oh well, this could and should be fixed in a revision soon.
(or so I presume.)

|>  However, apps which are CUA 1991 compliant should create a new
|> template for its document types in the standard templates folder.  Ex:
|> Upon install, Describe places a Describe document template in the
|> folder.  Dragging from this will let you create a new document.

It soudns like installing an OS/2 app spews objects all over the place.

|>  It
|> should work the same way the "new" apps which haven't come yet.
|> BTW, while I'm on templates, let me go into some of the advantages of
|> templates over stationary.  Templates can also be used for things other
|> than documents.  Ex: OS/2 comes with a template for printers.  To
|> install a new printer, you drag a printer icon off the template, then a
|> dialog box opens asking you to configure it (eg, stuff like the port,
|> printer type etc) and up pops a new printer object on your desktop.

This doesn't sound as good as having printer files that come with
yer printer; you drag the file from a floppy onto your hard drive
and thats it. Or just drop things onto the floppy, or whatnot.
The driver file contains the code to print; when osmething pritns
to that printer (file), that code is loaded and used.

Of course, MAcs dont work this way. But they ALMOST do, and they SHOULD.
 
|> This is also how you create new folders:  you drag a new folder off the
|> folder template.

This doesnt' sound nearly as convinient as a new folder command. You have
to dig thru folders to use this.

|>  Also, if you want to create a new color pallette, you
|> drag one of the color pallette template.

What is a "color palette" in this context?

|> etc. 

Most definitely!

|> For a new program,
|> there's a program template.

sounds like creating a new program file...

|> I don't think Macintosh has an analog to this do they?

Yeah, the program itself. In the Apple Desktop Interface (to be
precise about it), if you double click a program it opens up with
a new, empty document. This lets you have your consistent-make-new
-object (file), but only use the known double-click action. This
trick would work for some of these things (new program, new document,
maybe new palette) but not others (new folder).

There's no precise analogy.

|>  Templates are a
|> more centralized idea;  1991 CUA took stationary and generalized them to
|> include basically everything in the system.  Basically, whenever you
|> want to make something new in OS/2 2.0, you drag it out of the template
|> folder.  In a Mac, to make a new folder, you goto the menu bar, install
|> a new printer, go to chooser, etc.  Right?

You get a new folder from the menu bar, yeah. You install a new printer
by dragging it to the extensions folder (just drop it on the system
foler and let the system deal with it);

[deletia- Death to the Chooser!]
|> 
|> Yeah, it could be more organized, but OS/2 doesn't have anything like
|> it.  Here on campus for example, there's an Appleshare network which
|> runs over the TCP network.  It's broken down into domains.  Whenever you
|> use chooser, it lets you know all the servers and printers which are on
|> at the time.  I have yet to see this in a PC.  That's mostly why I like
|> it.
|> 

Well, nonetheless the Chooser is a poor way to do this. But its
nice to have the ability.

-- 
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

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