From: mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Radioastronomie
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 13:06:02 GMT

In <C0F5z7.A7A@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>   TeachText is mainly a document viewer.  If you want to compose a document
>with graphics, use a word processor.

Then don't praise it as a tool everyone needs to view documentation with
text _and_ graphics. The Amiga had two different tools for this and now
you can use MultiView for the same effect (except that it supports arbitrary
data, where does Teachtext has its hypertext ?).

>   I've been using 2.0 for a LONG time (since right after it became available),
>and I noticed that feature only just now.  Shows how often I use it.

Being a Mac user you probably didn't think of such a feature.

>into consideration the space for file names.  Score another one.  Still have
>a ratio of about 50:1 of Amiga GUI problems to Mac GUI problems, though.

If you'd have mentioned 100 problems... try using your fingers when
counting.

>   Automatic snapshotting is something I wish the Amiga had.  I hate having
>to select 'snapshot' EVERY time I arrange the icons in a window, to save
>the arrangement.  

Well, wether it is snapshotting (Amiga) or adjusting icon positions (Mac)
doesn't make a difference.

>   I don't know what you mean.  I've never had any problems with the way
>windows are arranged and manipulated on the Mac.

Maybe others have. That's why I do not like DEC windows but prefer something
like twm or olwm.

>   Have you tried loading an icon larger than 80x40 into IconEdit?  The icon
>gets truncated.  Commodore is trying to enforce size limits, too.  Good idea,
>because the Amiga's rather large icons are the reasons that things like 
>automatic feedback during drag&drop can't work very well.  

Hmm. I've seen a few large icons but most icons are quite small and comparable
to 'normal size' icons on the Mac.

>   At least the Mac has a trashcan.  When you delete an item on the Amiga,
>it's gone forever.  You don't have a second chance to retrieve it.

The Amiga has also a trashcan.. (one per volume). I use it rarely though
because usually I want to get rid of a file and recover the space used
by it.

>   Not a problem I've ever noticed before.

Well, I think that's a plus for the workbench. On the Mac I often have
to use the filerequester (which never points to the right directory
after I start the program).

>   And something that I've, to date, never used.  I was really excited about
>it when Commodore announced that ARexx was going to be standard with 2.0.
>Then I found that I could not find any uses for it, mostly because none of the
>programs that I want to write ARexx scripts for support ARexx.

Well, you can still use ARexx as a scripting language which is more powerful
than the shell. That's why I use ARexx, but with the increasing number
of ARexx supporting programs the other use (remote control of these apps)
will become more important.

>   Screen-dragging is a cute hack that has no real uses.  Multiple screens
>that can be swapped is far more useful, and the Mac has a software
>approximation of this.

Still. Screen-dragging allows you quick views on several apps at once. This
is especially important when window operations are slow.

>   Check out the Macintosh Programmer's workbench.  This is something that
>I wish the Amiga had.  A nice shell with graphical structures.  Does the
>Amiga shell have any GUI aspects?  Does the Amiga shell even have any menus?

Does the MPW come with a stock Mac ? Have a look at WShell which _does_
have menus.

>No to both questions.  The Amiga shell is still heavily entrenched in the
>MS-DOS and CP/M paradigm in this respect.

I rather think it's UNIXish.

>   Buffering of mouse events is another thing I wish the Amiga had.

The Amiga does buffer mouse events. If you want to get rid of it you
explicitely discard the events. I think that's less confusing for novices
although it may hinder the work of the expert users.

> Right
>now, the Amiga's Workbench does NOT multitask very well.  Many operations
>will put the 'busy pointer' up for many seconds, and during this time any
>mouse events are lost.

As I said, mouse events are discarded. The busy pointer is just the
form of the pointer (to be exact, the system < 3.0 doesn't even know
about _busy_ pointers).

But you are right, the workbench doesn't multitask very well. However,
this problem is worse on the Mac (where f.e. any dialog box will halt
all programs, not just the program that raised the box).

>   Both of these are carry-overs from the Mac's lack of real multitasking,
>which in turn is a problem with the internals and not the surface aspects.

Somewhere you said: a problem of the internals that peaks through the
surface. The point is that people do not complain here about the internals
but about what becomes visible at the surface.

BTW, you don't need real multitasking to get it right.

>   This feature is more necessary on the Amiga than on the Mac.  On the
>Amiga, icons (even the system default icons, viewed on a 724x482 screen)
>tend to be HUGE.  This necessitates giving the user a way to snapshot the
>volume icons.  On the Mac, the icons are small enough that the default 
>positions are never a problem.

I don't like the screen to be cluttered by icons at all. It isn't a
'problem' on the Mac but it isn't a good solution either. User changable
preferences for regions where different types of icons (or f.e. requesters
and dialog windows) should appear would be much better. Neither the Mac
not the Amiga have this.

>   Another little problem with the internals peeking through to the surface.

Ah.. here comes you sentence .)

>BTW, Amia format operations seem to take forever and a day, and don't seem
>to have very good error-checking during the format.  I don't know how many
>times I've formatted a disk on an Amiga, only to have write errors to the
>disk not much later.  the Mac seems to have better verification of disks
>during the format.

Utter garbage. Both machines use the same time to format a floppy (the Amiga
needs a few seconds more to write the disk icon though). They also just
write a track and read it back. If you have problems with Amiga floppies
you probably use the wrong disks.

>   Well, at least the user CAN muck with a program's resources.  Amiga programs
>have things similar to resources, but there is nothing available for the
>Amiga to allow a person to change these aspects of Amiga executable files.

The Amiga programs have nothing similar to resources. The best approximation
would be the tooltypes which can be changed from Workbench. On the stock
Mac you can't change the resources at all. You first have to get the
ResEdit program somewhere.

Regards,
-- 
Michael van Elst
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy