Re: For those wanting Orca-compatible Gno programs.

[taob@r-node.io.org (Brian Tao)]

In article <2gettm$drb@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>, G. Devin Reade writes...
> 
> Remember:  The more time a developer spends making something
> Orca-compatible, the less time he is spending developing something else.

    Bravo, Devin... as far as GS/OS text environments go, GNO is the
*only* game in town now.  Version 2.04 is amazingly stable and there are
so many features I've taken for granted now.  I had briefly used the
ORCA, Prosel-16 and METAL shells.  Forget it.  ORCA and Prosel-16 just
don't have the convenience and power of GNO.  The METAL shell revolves
around the METAL telecomm language, and it runs under ProDOS 8. 
Countless times I caught myself hitting the up-arrow to repeat a
previously issued command.  Or using my convenient namespace pathnames
(which don't exist outside of GNO).  Or ^C'ing a stuck or hung process
and getting back to the prompt.  Or the fast text I/O performance.

> Regarding full-blown applications, it is again nice if they can run
> without the Gno environment (and otherwise take advantage of Gno if it
> is active), but I think we will begin to see more apps that _require_
> Gno for reasons similiar to those above.

    Even a non-programmer like me appreciates the extra flexibility GNO
gives *existing* applications.  I can unpack a large ShrinkIt archive in
the background while in the Finder browsing my text files with
TeachReader or ShadowWrite.  The neat thing about that is watching the
unpacked files appear one by one in a Finder window.  :)  I've
experimented with some C programming on the GS and the benefits of GNO
are obvious.  I go through the "edit source code, compile source code,
run source code" cycle very often.  If I use a long command line, ORCA
forces me to retype it each time.  In GNO, I just hit the up arrow a
couple of times and then Return.  If you do that several dozen times in
one evening, you're saving a lot of time.  :)  What else can I say?  GNO
is the coolest thing I bought for my GS.

> Disclaimer:  Other than being a satisfied customer, I have no relation
> to Procyon Enterprises.

    Ditto here.  :)  Do you see comp.sys.apple2.orca?  Nope.  ;-)
-- 
Brian Tao:: taob@io.org (Internex Online, 416-363-3783, 27 lines, v.32bis)
::::::::::: 90taobri@wave.scar.utoronto.ca (University of Toronto, 9T4)