Atari Mega Archive 1/Atari Mega Archive - Volume 1.iso/lists/gem/l_0799/536

Internet Message Format | 1994-08-27 | 3.8 KB

Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 14:54:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Timothy Miller <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: REOPEN / REVERT
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Annius:

)The David Letterman of the Gem-list,  Tim Miller:

I don't know what to make of this.

)> Obviously, you've not tried to implement this system before... either
)> that or you made it more complicated than it really is.  In reality, the
)
)I know how easy the block=cursor system is to implement.  That's why it
)is extra suspicious from user-friendliness perspective.  It is simply a
)hack promoted to a feature.  An excuse of the lazy programmer.

Well, in the ever expounding words of one of our Gem-List members,
I disagree.


)Well...  except for ^A...  And as to your SHIFT+BACKSPACE problem,  the
)reason that most block=cursor programs use UNDO to undo just the LAST
)CHARACTER inserted is because of the same programmer laziness.  YES,
)orthogonal,  NO good.

And, Jee, isn't it just TOO easy to solve the whole Ctrl-A problem by
changing it.  Once you change that, the problems are gone.


)Many people stick to WordPerfect for decades because that's what they're
)WELL ACCUSTOMED TO.   Is that a good reason?

Oh, PLEASE don't talk about WordPuke.  I could give you a disertation on
the design flaws of WordPuke.  Imbedded code for formatting?  What planet
were they on when they came up with that?  Let's see... there's a font
change on page 2, and I'm on page 400.  Think about the processing time
required to deal with THAT.  Real word processors use an object tree to
just quickly look up the attributes.  And I never did like the way it
handled blocks.


)> You're right.  It's too much.  I prefer the terms "Hide Block", or
)
)Clear Selection. (=deselect all)

CLEAR?  There we go again with the ambiguity.  With pictures Clear is the
same as Delete, and you could, in theory, apply the same concept to
text.  Of course, Hide could suffer from the same problem.  How about we
go for a totally unambiguous term like "Deselect Block".  If we're going
to call it a 'selection' rather than a 'block', then "Deselect selection"
seems repetitive, but unambiguous.


)OK,  you go for the easy way,  fine.  But don't let your laziness
)influence our proposal.  Designing a good GUI and going for the most
)easy implementation simply don't go together at all.

MY laziness?  GOOD GUI?  Am I not one of the people talking about NOT
being lazy when it came to this proposal?  Am I not one of the people who
was talking about experience with good GUI's?  A good programmer will put
the effort required into making his interface easy to use.  A BETTER
programmer will design it right to begin with to save work for both
himself and the user.  Don't talk about MY laziness when there are those
here who don't want to put the effort into making this system truly
bullet-proof.

Changing Ctrl-A is so much simpler and ellegant than going through all of
the unnecessary effort to change the system or add extra 'safety'
features.  Changing Ctrl-A solves several problems at once, but it a very
simple thing to do.  Anything else is just cosmetic and doesn't get to
the root of the problem.

There is nothing wrong with making it easy on the programmer, as long as
the DESIGN is good.


Lefevre:

)If you abandon the text and reload the last version, it is REOPEN.
)REVERT means that you cancel all the changes (since the last OPEN/SAVE in
)the window); and you don't load anything.

But that's exactly the SAME thing as re-reading the file from disk.
REVERT is discard all changes since the last save or open.  But what I
said to do for REVERT was to discard what is in memory and load the old
information from the file.  That will discard all changes since the last
save or open.  Same net effect!!!