From: don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 19:49:38 GMT



     OK Marc, your first post didn't bother me because you presented it for 
the most part in a "constructive criticism" tone.  However, you seem to have
at least partially gotten over it and are moving back into your standard
"bitch, bitch, bitch" mode.

In <C0CFro.MuE@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) whines:
>
>   I could have had 70 more lines of weaknesses.  On the surface, the AmigaOS
>is riddled with defects.  Take drag-and-drop, for instance.  This feature is
>totally broken on the Amiga.  On the Macintosh, when an icon is dragged and
>held over a folder, the destination folder highlights to tell you exactly where
>the file will end up when it is released.  This does not happen on the Amiga.
>On the Amiga, drag-and-drop operations are done almost completely blind.  There
>is absolutely no feedback from the system to tell you exactly where the file
>will go when it is released.  You operate on faith and hope alone.  BTW, this
>lack of feedback from the system is in violation of Commodore's own 
>Style Guide.


     First of all, "doesn't do it the Mac way"  !=  "completely broken".
I have yet to accidentally drop something where I didn't want it.  Besides,
if Commodore duplicated too many finder features, they'd get into a 
Look and Feel battle.

>   Another feature that is totally broken on the Amiga is launching of 
>applications by double-clicking a project.  On the Macintosh, when you

     Funny, it works for me.  Must only be broken on your system.

>double-click a project, the 'creator' application is always found and launched
>and the project is loaded, no matter where the creator application is located
>on the disk.  On the Amiga, tooltypes are almost always hard-coded.  There 
>is almost no flexibility to the way the Amiga does it.  
>   For instance, I recently downloaded a bunch of Christmas SMUS music files
>from an Amiga FTP site.  The files came with a SMUS player, called 'play'.
>I unarchived the files, double-clicked one of the music files, and sure as
>the day the requester "Unable to open your tool 'play'" appreared.  This 
>simply does not happen on the Macintosh.  On the Mac, the system will always
>do its best to locate the application to go with a project.  I can count on 
>one hand the number of times that I have ever double-clicked the icon for a
>text file on the Amiga and had the correct text-file-viewer actually come
>up.  Most of the time, all I get is a requester saying "unable to locate your
>tool 'less'" or something similar.

     Hmmm... double-clicking is "totally broken", or so you said before, but
now you're saying it works if you've got the file in the right place?

>   All of this is fine for expert Amiga users, who can just view files with a
>shell, but all of this gives the Amiga a very steep learning curve for the
>novice user.  For the novice user, this facility for using a project by double-
>clicking it is almost completely broken.  It needs to be replaced with 
>something that actually works.

      Oh, I get it.  It's only _almost_ completely broken.  Please be more
explicit as to the degree of death/doom/brokenness in the future.  You've
been tragically misunderstood ("CDTV is dead") before.
      I'd prefer it f more folks just put a tool name (sans full path) into
project icons.  That way when the icon is clicked it will search the current
directory and the path for the appropriate tool.  This seems to be a 
reasonable solution.

[TeachText, NotePad, and AmigaGuide stuff deleted]

     It's my understanding that via datatypes in 3.0 AmigaGuide can be
(is being, will be... something along those lines) extended to handle sound,
graphics, etc.


>   That I can so easily come up with a long list of Amiga surface defects 
>testifies to how unprofessional the surface features of the AmigaOS really
>are.  I really tried making a list of things that could be improved with
>the surface features of the MacOS, and could not find more than three or four.

     Well, what about those under-the-surface features like pre-emptive
multitasking?  That's definitely "completely broken" on the Mac, and I
for one would be very unwilling to give that up just to have the target 
highlighted during a drag & drop.

     The two main additions I'd like to see added to Workbench (besides the
ability to run on top of a system-wide RTG system, of course) are:

     An ARexx port.
     A mouse/keyboard macro recording facility (Yes Marc, like the Mac's)


>But it seems so easy to whittle off a list of a hundred or so things with 
>the surface features of the AmigaOS that are broken or unworkable or badly
>in need of improvements.  It should not be so easy to come up with such a
>list.

     Marc, it's _always_ been easy for you to rattle off a list of things
wrong with the Amiga, real or perceived.  You seem to spend quite a bit
of time practicing it.  Your lists also seem to have a tendency to 
contain lots of self-contradictory items, things that really _do_ work
but you didn't bother to find out, and gross exaggerations of small
problems.
     Can't you be constructive (with a non-whining attitude) for more
than 1 post per month?  Granted, you're improving, but you're still
annoying.




-- 
Don Lloyd                / "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of \
don@chopin.udel.edu      | another computer is a kludge.  It has nothing to do |
GeNIE: D.LLOYD7          \ with the Intel CPU"  - Jerry Shekhel                /
BIX: DRL  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy