Re: CMSDA
Re: CMSDA
- Subject: Re: CMSDA
- From: Ondra Cada <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 12:29:03 +0100
On Monday, March 25, 2002, at 09:31 , Charles Srstka wrote:
However, why must people have this attitude that the old Mac OS was
therefore garbage and didn't have any nice features at all that we might
want to keep? Where does this animosity come from, anyway?
Well, it is of course not true (in both ways: people -- save perhaps a
very small number of exceptions -- have not that attitude, and the Classic
was not *entirely* garbage).
The point of many of us who knew NeXTStep well though is that
- there are almost no cases when a solution of NeXTStep was used in Mac OS
X although there was a better solution in Classic (*);
- alas, there is a VAST list of cases where NeXTStep was very far better,
but the Classic solution was used anyway.
That is what might lead sometimes to bitter speak which migth give an
impression of the quoted attitude indeed.
Let me introduce as a nice example one GUI element which Apple seriously
messed up: object drag and drop into text. It always used to work so that
if an object was dropped over the text window, it was always placed *at
the insertion point*. Now, the insertion point moves to the place the
mouse cursor is over.
I don't know whether those people who are responsible for this nonsense
actually thought that NeXT programmers were not able to move the insertion
point as mouse moved, and so they thought they are improving the
thing?!?!?!? Gosh.
Pity they instead did not consider *WHY* the behaviour was such: how do
you normally d&d an object into a text? Of course, you write the text up
to something like "...and here is the nice movie for you:", then select
the source window for the object (usually Finder, though not necessarily),
and then want to d&d it into text. You can't though, since the place the
object belongs to is almost surely obscured by the Finder window now! You
can't activate the text window before drag either, since it is just as
probable _it_ would obscure the object in Finder instead. So, due to this,
ahem, not thought through, decision any d&d-ing means perpetual, and in a
decent GUI as NeXTStep had quite unnecessary, moving of windows -- read it
a serious, very serious time loss :(((((((((((
Well, that's just one example of many, many, many similar ones, and that's
why sometimes people who knew NeXTStep well might in their natural angst
caused by this serious crippling sometimes sound as "whole Mac OS Classic
was a crap", although it is of course not true and they know quite well
that it is not true.
To return more on topic: the Classic API, today -- after some extensions,
improvements, and changes for better portability -- named Carbon, *IS* a
very ugly garbage entirely, compared with the beauty and effectivity of
Cocoa. I can (*very* reluctantly) accept the need of Carbon as a
transition tool so as Office was quickly portable, but it is extremely bad
for us all that the vast majority of new APIs are "carbon" (ie. they
perfectly fit its non-OO concept and ugliness).
That is what surely leads to extremely bitter speak, and rightly at that.
(*) exceptions are almost solely Finder issues -- but Finder is a Carbon
thing! I am *pretty* sure that had it be based on the Cocoa Workspace
Manager (which of course would be the sensible solution), it would now
*very easily* accomodated all those great NeXT things /like shelf/ PLUS
all those great Classic Finder ones /like popup folders/.
---
Ondra Cada
OCSoftware: email@hidden
http://www.ocs.cz
2K Development: email@hidden
http://www.2kdevelopment.cz
private email@hidden
http://www.ocs.cz/oc
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| | >Re: CMSDA (From: Charles Srstka <email@hidden>) |