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- Date: Fri, 17 Jun 94 19:50 CDT
- From: ekl@sdf.lonestar.org (Evan K. Langlois)
- To: gem-list@world.std.com
- Subject: Re: Reader's Digest
- Precedence: bulk
-
- 1 - Hacking WINX to hack GEM so that we need to click twice on a closer is
- really STUPID. I HATE that. And hacking things just isn't right. It's
- not what GEM is. This is supposed to be a standard, not an OS hack fest.
- Besides, read ST PRO GEM, or any good book on interfaces. They will tell
- you that less is better. Count the number of keys and clicks and
- how far you need to move the mouse, etc, required to perform a function
- and that affects the learning curve. The less the better. If any function
- requires more than like 7 operations, then forget it, people won't use
- the feature.
-
- 2 - Hacking Key Repeat is also pretty stupid!
-
- No wonder programs are breaking under MultiTOS. This is my machine not
- yours. Applications that don't share simply don't get run. Applications
- have NO business messing with global information like that. NONE. Are
- you gonna change all my window colors too? The screen is not yours, you
- must beg GEM for it, the keyboard is not yours, you must beg GEM for
- keyboard events, and I definately don't want any program messing with my
- OS. If I want my OS messed with, I'll do it myself. Hacking into the
- key repeat??
-
- 3 - Underlining Buttons : Who says this is standard? I hate underlines.
- Bold could be OK, but not Underline. Underlines are always done poor and
- hacked, either like STZIP which writes all the underlines, redraws teh
- screen - erasing the underlines, and then draws everything over again.
- If the underlines don't draw with the rest of the information, then don't
- bother. I don't need underlines.
-
- 4 - As to MultiTOS being slower than TOS 1.0, first, I think you are wrong.
- As for thins not redrawing properly, this is a problem is the application.
- Don't tell me its a "legal" application. Either you are using something
- like Let 'Em Fly to turn off certain redraws, or the app is bad, or it is
- doing something else that is bad - like hacking into the key repeat routine!
- MultiTOS will be faster soon.
-
- 5 - This crap about the "!!" is useless. Anything other than 0 is TRUE.
- I guess if you wanted to do math with the 1 then you might be able to work
- with it, but there is a difference between a value, and a flag. So,
-
- if (condition)
- var = 1;
-
- is actually more readable and produces the same amount of code. You can't do
- math in the CPu flags, so the compiler would have to produce the code anyway.
-
- 6 - The TOS emulator for PoerMacs is partially done. Get MacMiNT and hack
- up a SCREEN.SYS and whatever else you need to run NVDI and MultiTOS (or
- similar) on top. It shouldn't take too much hacking (hacking parts of
- GEM or NVDI that use the MFP would be the hardest.
-
- Now, how I feel about keyboard short-cuts and how others feel are different.
- The APP_DEFS.INF file is the best way. THAT is where the standard should
- be, and the default entries in APP-DEFS.INF can be decided by the list
- or by the programmer. You could even set the way block selection works,
- and what happens when you type something when a block is selected (overwrite
- or insert, or deselect).
-
- This file is the best method.
-
-