From: barham@qut.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Date: 5 Jan 93 14:40:54 EST
Organization: Queensland University of Technology

barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
> What happens if you give a text file a project icon, enter "c:more" in
> the tooltypes for the icon, and "more" is not in the "c:" directory?  Do
> you get an "Unanble to open your tool 'c:more'" requester?  This does not
> happen on the Macintosh.

Yes, but that is the stupid people who put a directory in the
tooltypes.  If a directory is explicitly specified, the operating
system should look only in that directory.  If no directory is
specified, the OS should look along the path.  That's the way all
good operating systems behave.  The computer would look pretty stupid
if you specified "c:more" and it wasn't there, so it wandered off and
looked for it elsewhere and who knows WHAT it'll find!

> If something works in a few cases, that does not necessarily mean that
> it isn't broken.

Double clicking project icons works ALL THE TIME in the manner
specified in the manual.  As I said before, if you specify a
directory and the program is not in that directory, the OS SHOULD
COMPLAIN!

> >      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.

YES YES YES!

>    That would not fix any of the archives on the nearly 800 Fish disks,
> that already have projects with hard-coded paths for the needed utilities.

But that is THE DEVELOPERS FAULT, not the OS's - Commodore have
wasted enough time patching things for old software - I don't want
them to waste time patching things for stupidly coded tool-types!

> Soething needs to be added to the OS so that the OS can go searching for a
> utility if it isn't found in the hard-coded path in a project's tooltypes.

No, people shouldn't hard-code the path.

> >     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.

Datatypes will be the saviour of us all.

>    Will this extended AmigaGuide and all of the needed support files to
> handle graphics and sound be made standard software with the Amiga?  The
> nice thing about Macintosh TeachText is that it is ready-to-go.  You can
> read a document with text and color graphics immediately after using the
> computer for the first time, without having to set anything up.

Datatypes will do anything, whenever you want it to.  Datatypes are
my heros.

> >     Well, what about those under-the-surface features like pre-emptive
> >multitasking?  That's definitely "completely broken" on the Mac,
>
>    I've already admitted that, but this is comp.sys.amiga, after all.

This is c.s.a.advocacy, where we advocate the amiga and bash everyone
else.  So the discussion should obviously include Mac bashing.

> And this is a discussion of the problems of the Amiga OS.  Besides,
> Apple manages to sell three times as many Macintoshes as Commodore
> sells Amigas, every year, in spite of the inelegance of the
> underlying Mac OS.

Good grief, is that all Apple sells?  Recently you were saying
Commodore sells negligible Amigas compared to Apple selling Macs, and
now you say Apple only sells three times as many Macs as Commodore
sells Amigas?  That is negligible?  That sounds great to me!

> This shows how much Commodore needs to shift their priorities from
> the underlying OS to what's on the surface.

They shouldn't "shift their priorities" - whats underneath should
ALWAYS be the priority - it is what is really important even if the
average Joe doesn't know it.  They should, however, spruce up its
appearance a bit and market it in a more "glossy" way, to attract
those people who don't know it is a far and away a better machine
(which is what you have inadvertently admitted in another post by
saying that it is more elegant under the surface %^).

> ---
> | Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
> --------------------------------------------------
-- 

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| t.barham@qut.edu.au (Tim Barham) - "Dances with Lemmings"          |
| Applications Programmer for the Computer Based Education Section,  |
| Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Qld, Australia      |
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| "You're so open-minded that your brain leaked out..."              |
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