NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/programmer/7027

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 3.4 KB

Path: nic.wi.leidenuniv.nl!jvermeul
From: [e-mail] (J.T.Vermeulen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: Say *perhaps* to fat binaries (was: what the new amiga-os *must* have)
Date: 7 Apr 1996 18:56:18 GMT
Organization: Mathematics & Computer Science, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
Message-ID: <4k934i$[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <4k8buh$[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ind206ab.wi.leidenuniv.nl

In article <4k8buh$[e-mail]>,
Cmarschn <[e-mail]> wrote:
>Im Artikel <[e-mail]>, "Tim Teulings" <[e-mail]>
>schreibt:
>
>>(..) A
>>requester could pop up in the background asking you for format your
>harddrive
>>while you were typing mails in your editor. Maybe AT should forbid
>hardrives
>>for amigas at all to make the system more userfriendly and safer ;-)
>>
>>I extensivly use keboard-shortcuts for a long, long  time  (even  return
>and
>>escape as default for "do it" and "don't do it"). And I  never  formatted
> my
>>harddrive that way, lost some important data etc... And I'm one of the
>people
>>who look at the keyboard instead at the screen when typing.
>
>Finally I got a friend out there in cyberspace. I 've never understood why
>I just can cycle through string gadgets, but not through cycles, radios,
>checks, listboxes and so forth. That can't be so hard to implement!

So be grateful that he misses the point like you.  The point is that gadgets
and windows must not be set up in such a way that you can easily do things by
accident--NOT that you can't do them at all.  Amiga-key combinations are fine
and the system does define those.

With serious design issues such as these, two users saying "I never formatted
my hard drive by accident" is not sufficient reason to take risks with other
users' machines.

(Note that your hard disk would be considerably less safe if the Format Disk
requester would accept <return> as "okay" even when you were typing the
disk's new name in the string gadget.)

In my experience, even requesters without dangerous keyboard shortcuts that
take over the input focus when opening (even that is a style-guide violation,
no matter whether you say we have one or not) frequently cause small amounts
of data loss, and I shudder at some of the things that could have happened if
they could be confirmed with a single keypress.

But then, I work in a networking setup with usually some important work going
on, so you never know when some requester is going to appear, and I'm running
SunMouse to complicate things even further.  You see, you just can't judge
that for the other users.  Take the safety of your own work lightly if you
consider that cool or if you care more about efficiency or if you just don't
make many mistakes.  But taking somebody else's lightly is an insult.  The
market doesn't appreciate that unless you're called Microsoft.


>     ///
>----///-------------------------------------------------------
>\\\///  Clemens Marschner           [e-mail] (Germany)
>-\///---------------------------------------------------------


--
============================================================================
#  Jeroen T. Vermeulen   \"How are we doing kid?"/   Yes, we use Amigas.   #
#---  [e-mail]    ---\"Oh, same as always."/--         ...          --#
#[e-mail] \ "That bad, huh?"  /  Got a problem with that? #