From: weinkam@fraser.sfu.ca (James Lawrence Weinkam)
Subject: Re: Is OS/2 Easier?
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:11:41 GMT

timbol@netcom.com (Mike Timbol) writes:

>In article <1992Nov22.144550.6518@gw.wmich.edu> 925wardell@gw.wmich.edu writes:

>>	For example, the #1 question I get from people concerning windows:
>>"I just loaded program x on my hard drive but where is it now? how do I
>>load it?"

>     Any windows program with half a brain is going to install itself into
>program manager and make it pretty obvious to the user how to load it.

He did not say the program was a windows program, just program x.  This
could mean a dos program, and very few of these actually set themselves
up for windows.  Also once you do create the icon for it in program 
manager, you must also then go to pif editor and create a pif file for
a non-windows program if it requires special memory settings.

>>	I then have to take them through the process of explaining
>>that the program manager is just a bunch of pictures representing programs
>>on the computer.  They are not really the programs.  Then I have to
>>show them how to put a new program in the program manager which means
>>(if they have windows 3.1) loading the file mananger and dragging it
>>to the program manager or going to file, new item, find it on the hard
>>drive and then place it.
>>
>>	No one ever asks "where's my program" on os/2.  They go to their
>>drives and just find it on their hard disk.  If they want to add it
>>to their os/2 system folder they just makea  shadow of it but they
>>do not have to do that to find it relatively easy.

>     What's the difference between finding the program with the file
>manager, or finding the program with the drives icon?  (Other than the
>fact that the drives icon is slower)

The difference is that when the copied the file to the hard drive, they 
saw in which folder they had put it.  Not to run it, it is only a matter
of opening that folder and starting it.  By opening that folder you will
get the nice icons, not some list of file names like the filemanager 
provides.  For convenience they may wish to create a shadow of it on
the desktop so they do not have to open up the folder containing the 
program.  I find this much more straight foward than the windows program
manager.

>     And which is easier -- dragging an item from the file manager to the
>program manager, or finding something with the drives icon and creating
>a shadow of it on the desktop?

>     I *do* think the WPS is easy to use, but I think this is NOT a good
>example of it.  The WPS is nice, and certainly more flexible than the
>progman/fileman combination, but there are lots of things it can't do and
>lots of things it can do, but they're hard as hell to find out about.

>     - Mike

>P.S. - Anyone know the answer to any of these questions?:

>     1. How do you take a bunch of icons on the desktop and line them up in
>        a particular order?
How do you do a similar thing in progman in windows?

>     2. How do you change the automatic spacing of icons on the desktop?
The icons are placed as close together as they can without their names 
overlapping, so a program with a very long name will take up more space
than a program with a very short name.  A very logical thing to do compared
to program manager where the spacing is fixed, so you either have names 
that overlap, or lots of wasted space.

>     3. How do you change the environment variables that an OS/2 program on
>        the desktop uses without shutting down?
How do you do this in windows?

>     4. How do you take a DOS image and give it access to drive A:?
Fsaccess !a i think, look in the command ref under fsaccess.  Once you
do this though you no longer have access to the image file.

>     5. How do you change the time/datestamp of a file under OS/2 (i.e.,
>        like the "touch" utility does under DOS)?
By the Workset /2 developer and it comes with a touch utility.

>      Thanks in advance for any answers.
You're welcome.

James
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc