GS vs MAC Finders (was My 6.0.1 bugs)

[Bill North <north@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Date: 23jul93
To: csa2
From: Bill North (Respond To: north@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Subject: GS vs MAC Finders


>     One suggestion: how about giving us back our horizontal scroll bars
> in list views?  An old, old version of the Finder (1.0? 1.1?) had this
> feature, but it was taken out for some reason.  Since you're trying to
> make the GS Finder act like the Mac Finder.... :-P

The MAC Finder is not the ultimate model around. The GS Finder has learned
and applied some lessons the MAC should emulate:

1. File copying is abysmal on the MAC. No matter how much memory you have,
it only copies in small (512k?) chunks. Of course memory management on the
MAC is abysmal in general (no matter how much memory you have, an
application's
"preallocated" memory size can't be exceeded while it's executing).

2. When done copying files, the MAC UNhilites the originals and hilites
the
copies. This is aggravating and incomprehensible. 99% of the time my file
copying is to move files somewhere and then delete the originals. On the
MAC,
you lose any indication of what the originals were.

3. I have yet to see a means of getting a "complete tree structure file
list" like
Prosel (and others) on the GS, and MS-DOS can provide. I can't inventory
what's
on my MAC! (Aside: Prosel and Bill Tudor's Six-Pack listers choke on HFS
volumes,
otherwise I could get an inventory by hooking the HFS disks up to the GS.)

4. GSOS had an "organized" system folder before the MAC did. The MAC used
to
have EVERYTHING lumped in the main system folder until it became an
unmanageable,
unfindable mess. MAC System 7 helped considerably, but most MAC
applications still
want to save their private files in the system folder instead of their
private
folders. (Is this due to MAC prefix protocol?) Did the MAC learn from GS
development, or the GS benefit from the extended MAC development? Doesn't
matter.
Both GS and MAC got a better system out of it.

The GS Finder is newer than the MAC Finder. Rather than "trying to make
the
GS Finder act like the Mac Finder", they both should act in a useable
manner.
Apple should not be reluctant to change the MAC Finder to match the GS if
the
GS is better. Whether they ARE reluctant I can't answer...

> --
> Brian Tao:: taob@io.org (Internex Online, 416-363-3783, 10 lines,
v.32bis)
> ::::::::::: 90taobri@wave.scar.utoronto.ca (University of Toronto, 9T4)

/*  Bill North -- north@spso.gsfc.nasa.gov  */