From: johnsd2@jec324.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: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 01:05:36 GMT

In article <oeo9LTi00WB8J2R14q@andrew.cmu.edu>, cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu (Carl B Jabido) writes:
|> Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.mac.advocacy: 5-Oct-92 Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2
|> and Window.. by Daniel N. Johnson@vccsou 
[deletia- about Notebooks in OS/2]
|> > Sounds a LOT like dialog boxes.
|> 
|> Yeah, basically they are.  Just another analog.  They probably put it in
|> to standardize a dialog box with many options.  Right now, for options,
|> most apps use a bunch of different dialog boxes.  They just wanted to
|> put them all in one.  Of course, you can't have a dialog box that's
|> bigger than the app, so break it down into several pages, each page is a
|> different item.

Ok. There IS an equivalent to this in the Macintosh, but it is
VERY rarely used because you generally dont have that many
options in one window, and if you did it would be nicer to have more
than one window. The thing you do is emulate the old-style control
panel. You have a vertical stack of named icons on the left, and
a scrollbar. You select an icon and the relevant controls appear
on teh right. Word5 does this, so does MacDraw Pro, I think. Its
not that common. Main problem is that icons ALREADY mean something
in the MacOS (there those thing you double click :) So it
can be a bit confusing. Maybe the notebook thing is better.

|> > Whereas with stationary you define your own. I dont see
|> > why you need this special template thing tho- u couild just
|> > double click the app. Poof, new document. No need for extra
|> > objects.
|> 
|> You can define your own, but the standard template is always there for a
|> user who doesn't want to make it.

Ok. Can you take the templates and put it somewhere else? Say, make
SEVERAL template folders? That could help.

|> About the your confusion about the need for templates.  Remeber that the
|> final implementation will isolate the user from apps.  In that
|> situation, there will be no apps to double click on.  Right now, you can
|> double click the app, and templates are just another way of creating a
|> new doc.  There has to be a transition point: 
|> old way            transition point           new way
|> dbl-click apps     dbl-click and templates    templates only

I see. (ya know, this is how the Lisa did it- except it wasn't
templates it was statiary, and you double-clicked it);

do teh templates provide a way to name a new file? Like, you drag
the template to the appropriate fodler and a dialog comes up asking for
a name, say? Or do you just rename the created file?

It seems to me that this is basically nice, but templates
add an unnecessary complexity- the app itself could be its
own (basic) template. This would make it obvious that you cant
create a document if you dont have the app for it.

[deletia- Templates, folders, etc]
|> >  
|> > Well, if thats all its not so bad. Sounds like that fodler
|> > could get cluttered.
|> 
|> OS/2 has several ways of organizing folders.  First, there's the way
|> used in Mac and Windows: Just organize them so there's no overlapping
|> icons or whatever.  OS/2 can also let you "flow": which means to let the
|> icons flow down vertically down the folder, so you get a long folder
|> which has a vertical scroll bar, and you just scroll up or down.  It's
|> alphabetical so you can find it easier.  

I meant there could be too many files in one folder, so you'd ahve
to much about to find anything.

Incidentally, I didn't realize OS/2 would always "organize" things for
you; Can you just stick an icon somewhere if you like?
[ps this flow thing is very similar to the "view-by-name or whatever"
in the finder, except in the finder it still remember where your icons
WHERE, so if you switch back everything is still froody. And you
can expand the folders out, of course.]

Also, can you flow by other things (ya know, size, kind, etc? I use
view-by kind a lot myself in the Finder)

|> > |> Yeah, that's why if you right-click on a folder or something, it'll have
|> > |> an option, create.  That's a cascaded menu (brings up another menu) and
|> > |> you can choose folder, and you get another folder.  
|> >  
|> > That doesn't sound a convinient as a new folder command EITHER. :)
|> 
|> I think it's more intuitive though.  If for example, you want to create
|> a new folder on the desktop, you right click on the desktop (to bring up
|> the properties menu) and choose create:folder.  You don't have to click,
|> go up to the menu, and then choose new folder.
|> It's not much slower.

I didn't mean slower. I meant convinient. Mucking around in heriarchial
menus is (imho) a royal pain (tho maybe OS/2 has better heirarchials
than the mac does); Also its worth mentioning that these pop ups
are invisible. It isn't clear how you create a folder; one of the
advantages of menubars is that can see when they are present, and
browse them easily.

[deletia- you forgot about the control panels]
|>   
|> > Ok, I get it. CAn these palettes be used on things IN a document?
|> 
|> I don't see why not.  There are limits to what you can do in a 1.0
|> release though, so I don't see many apps doing that.  For the most part,
|> apps have their own things for changing fonts/colors etc.  It would be
|> nice though, and yet another thing to unify the system.

But htis is OS/2 >2<.0. :)

|> > Ok, just 2 points- I hear the slowdown aint so minor, and the MAcitnosh
|> > caches icons and such so that if you do close a folder for real, it
|> > still opens quicker. Can't OS/2 do this?

[deletia- about slowdown]

|> Caching: yeah it can be done.  The standard OS/2 cache is about 128k. 
|> Attributes like icons, title, background color, foreground color, fonts
|> etc, are stored as part of the file and called Extended Attributes, or
|> EA's.  EA's are about 4000 bytes depending on folder.  This can add up
|> and of course, there are other things in the cache, so the attributes
|> will probably be out of the cache in a few minutes anyway.

Uh, this sounds like a Disk Cache. The finder maintains a SEPARATE
store of icons inside of itself.

Incidentally- about Extended Attributes. These sound quite a bit
like a cross between MAc Finder Info and Resource Forks. Can
you elaborate a little bit? If OS/2 has resource forks, I may
just belive that someone out there has a brain. :)

[deletia- CSD]
|>   
|> > Incidentally, the Macintosh desktop is also a folder. (but internally
|> > the arrangement is odd)
|> 
|> Really? Never knew that.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, its more than one folder. in Reality (tm)
the file system is split up by volume; But each volume contains
2 special folders: Desktop and Trash. The Desktop's of all mounted
volumes are combined and displayed on screen; therefore dragging something
from a floppy to a desktop does not copy the file (although for
remote servers, it does copy it but it warns you first); This means
that if you put something on the desktop from a floppy directly, its
still on the floppy and when u eject that floppy the icon vanishes.
(And when you replace it, the icon reappears); The same is true for
the trash. the finder and standard file routines maintain an illusion for
the user however that the system is all one big file-tree, starting
at the Desktop (which contains all mounted volumes and the trash as
well as anything else you like- that part is fudged, there isn't
really a trash in each desktop, or aliases to volumes, or whatnot)

Note that this is Sys 7 only. Previously, the mechanism was
different (there was a bit in the finder flags that said
"hey, Im on the desktop!") and teh standard file dialogs did NOT
reflect the desktop. (which stank. But its all better now! :)
-- 
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

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