It's not about launching apps. It's about keeping many open windows organized. Launchers don't do a thing about that.
But they essentialy do away with the need for organization. If you could just jam your hand into a pile of papers and always pull out the one you wanted, why would you ever bother to file them "properly"? With the productivity angle addressed, it seems to me that aesthetics is the only reason left for being neat...
True, it doesn't allow you to partition your applications in some set of virtual desktops. However, it obviates the need for having such a setup in the first place.
Who cares where an app is when you can reach it (and perform some functions with it) in 2-4 keystrokes? Who cares if you want to keep app A and app B next to each other so you can operate on the two of them together if you can use something like Quicksilver to "glue" the two together?
I suppose it's also fair to ask, other than catering to OCD-like tendencies, what does a virtual desktop environment give you that something like QS or Launchbar don't?
How about "even automotive engineers buy prebuilt cars"? Chefs and food doesn't work because food is consumed much more often than cars or computers.
Not that it really matters, but I went with chef because the effort and knowledge required to assemble a quality computer is on the same order as that required to cook a great meal. Additionaly, both are very dependent on the quality of the ingredients used.
Have you ever hung out with or been or talked to a goth or punk?
Sure. But that was back in the 80's, when we didn't give a shit where you shopped because, well... we didn't give a shit about anything.
More inefficient than just clicking on an icon that's always visible.
No, not really. For example, right clicking on the app icon in the dock then clicking on the proper entry takes two clicks (or a click, slide, release action). Now that might seem like more work than a single click on a taskbar style icon, but that's ignoring the click that it took to minimize the window in the first place, so on an amortized basis, it's the same amount of work to bring a hidden/non-minimized window as it is to minimize a window and then restore it...
WTF? Certain actions may be clumsy on MacOS, so your answer is to accuse the users of having medical disorders?
No... I'd fit most of them into the "sucker" category for putting themselves needlessly into awkward situations. The OCD remark only applies to people who feel a need to minimize windows to keep their desktops "neat".
Again, my point is with something like Quicksilver and the show all application windows expose action, minimizing windows is just a waste of time...
That's exactly my point! Having to go hunt for windows that may be minimized or may just be hidden is not efficient.
Minimizing windows at all is inefficient. Just right-click (or control-click or click and hold) on the app icon in the dock and you get a list of all of the open windows in the app. Or bring the app to the front and go to its Window menu or use Cmd-` to cycle through the open windows. Minimization is for suckers or people with OCD.
Add an option to put all open windows in the Dock please and the "switchers" will love it.
And it'll make the dock a mile and a half long with three pixel icons...
Plus even Expose doesn't work well past 5-6 open windows (at least on my powerbook screen).
Perhaps for some. (fires up Expose. 1...2...) I've currently got 37 windows on my desktop, and I'm not having issues. Though I rarely use the "Show all windows" version of expose, just the "Show current application winhows".
The lack of a start menu was his big complaint. I know it is the "Mac Way", but the Finder really is an inefficient start menu substitute (for accessing lesser used programs). It requires many more user actions.
I agree with you here. The Finder and the Dock are poor app launchers and switchers. Launchbar and Quicksilver (which I mentioned a few posts above this one) are much better solutions.
Whoa settle down. The place for Expose is the mouse button (so long as you aren't using Apple's mouse.) F9/F10/F11 require moving your hands.
So set up hot corners via system preferences. Throw the pointer to one corner of the screen for show all windows, throw it in another for show all app windows, etc...
Then after a week or so you get something like Launchbar or Quicksilver so you never have to look at the Dock or think in terms of virtual desktops again. And then a month down the line you pick up something like the Touchstream so you never have to touch your mouse again...
It's less a case of being able to do something, ond more along the lines of having to do something explicitly. For example, this is just fine in C/C++:
#include <stdio.h>
int main () {
printf ("%d %c %d %c\n",10,'a',(10+'a'),(10+'a')); }
response: 10 a 107 k
But not so good in OCaml:
# Printf.printf "%d %c %d %c\n" 10 'a' (10+'a') (10+'a');; Characters 41-44:
Printf.printf "%d %c %d %c\n" 10 'a' (10+'a') (10+'a');;
^^^ This expression has type char but is here used with type int
You have to use explicit conversions to get this to work:
# let f = Char.code and g = Char.chr in Printf.printf "%d %c %d %c\n" 10 'a' (10+ f 'a') (g (10+ f 'a'));;
10 a 107 k
95% of the time you you type in no type annotations, and 4.99 of the other 5% of the time it's when you're using something like variant types. For the added safety (and other benefits, like making debugging with a REPL much easier) of the strong type system, Graham's position as stated above is greatly weakened.
While these can be considered types (for a suitable definition of type), they are more generally considered structures. I believe the grandparent was speaking of Perl's a float is an int is a string is a bool depending on how you use it abilities, which make Perl a rather weakly typed language.
Yeah, but it looks like they stripped off a couple of ML's better features (currying and modules), dropped tail call optimization, and slapped scheme's syntax (or lack thereof) onto it. I'll have to read their rational a bit more carefully, but it seems like they're just trying to create a slightly better Lisp machine... Although Lisp could successfully escape the confines of the Lisp machine. BitC seems pretty iffy outside of Coyotos.
I wouldn't say it's useless, but I can't see what other people find so great about it either.
I downloaded the demo a while back and played with it for a while. The first five minutes of using it were pretty cool, but the novelty soon wore off, and the warts started showing through. For example, if your have been entering books into the library and then want to enter a game or a CD, you need to switch to the appropriate shelf before entering the UPC, or you get a Lookup Failed error. Why should I have to switch shelves? Why doesn't the software do it for me? It would also be nice if the data entry would default to the UPC/ISBN field rather than the name field (or at least have that be a user settable feature). If I'm going to be doing data entry, I'm going to want to enter the shortest string, which is almost always going to be the UPC/ISBN number. I know I had other gripes, but I've forgotten them by now.
And frankly, if you don't have an iSight/other barcode reader, the software just isn't worth the $40 price. I'm not sure it's worth that even with an iSight, but I haven't been able to evaluate that option so I can't say for sure.
Meh... just my 13 cents (you know, inflation). Maybe I'll look at it again if they release a v2.0 or so see if they've actually made it worth my coin.
Because most IDEs do exactly what you say they shouldn't, and for good reason. Indenting blocks of text is so commonplace as to be pedantic;
Cutting and copying are also commonplace (moreso than indenting text I'd wager), yet we don't highlight the text we wish to operate on and type a C or a P in order to perform those actions. We use a special key combination instead.
Why should we expect different behavior from the tab key? Because emacs screwed up X many years ago?
Not a big surprise, really. With the exception of HTML editing, the crop of newer editors for OS X (TextMate, SEE, Smultron, etc.) were making BBEdit look like that smelly old t-shirt stuck at the bottom of the drawer. You used to love that shirt, but now there are a whole lot of new shirts for you to wear, only without all of the rips and stains.
Since BBEdit is underfeatured and way overpriced for general text editing, Bore Bones had to do something to keep their name recognition alive...
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It's not about launching apps. It's about keeping many open windows organized. Launchers don't do a thing about that.
But they essentialy do away with the need for organization. If you could just jam your hand into a pile of papers and always pull out the one you wanted, why would you ever bother to file them "properly"? With the productivity angle addressed, it seems to me that aesthetics is the only reason left for being neat...
LISP is software, if you aren't running LISP, why would it be a LISP machine?
Because the Lisp machines were more than just software... They had a number of special purpose hardware chunks designed to run Lisp more efficiently.
True, it doesn't allow you to partition your applications in some set of virtual desktops. However, it obviates the need for having such a setup in the first place.
Who cares where an app is when you can reach it (and perform some functions with it) in 2-4 keystrokes? Who cares if you want to keep app A and app B next to each other so you can operate on the two of them together if you can use something like Quicksilver to "glue" the two together?
I suppose it's also fair to ask, other than catering to OCD-like tendencies, what does a virtual desktop environment give you that something like QS or Launchbar don't?
How about "even automotive engineers buy prebuilt cars"? Chefs and food doesn't work because food is consumed much more often than cars or computers.
Not that it really matters, but I went with chef because the effort and knowledge required to assemble a quality computer is on the same order as that required to cook a great meal. Additionaly, both are very dependent on the quality of the ingredients used.
Have you ever hung out with or been or talked to a goth or punk?
Sure. But that was back in the 80's, when we didn't give a shit where you shopped because, well... we didn't give a shit about anything.
While Exposé does improve the productivity in comparison to Windows, it doesn't match multiple desktops, IMO.
Download Quicksilver and use it for a little while. You'll never care about multiple desktops again...
It also shows you're completely incapable of doing it all yourself, and you need someone else to put it together for you.
Even chefs eat out at restaurants.
Not being able to do something and not wanting to do something are two completely different concepts...
More inefficient than just clicking on an icon that's always visible.
No, not really. For example, right clicking on the app icon in the dock then clicking on the proper entry takes two clicks (or a click, slide, release action). Now that might seem like more work than a single click on a taskbar style icon, but that's ignoring the click that it took to minimize the window in the first place, so on an amortized basis, it's the same amount of work to bring a hidden/non-minimized window as it is to minimize a window and then restore it...
WTF? Certain actions may be clumsy on MacOS, so your answer is to accuse the users of having medical disorders?
No... I'd fit most of them into the "sucker" category for putting themselves needlessly into awkward situations. The OCD remark only applies to people who feel a need to minimize windows to keep their desktops "neat".
Again, my point is with something like Quicksilver and the show all application windows expose action, minimizing windows is just a waste of time...
That's exactly my point! Having to go hunt for windows that may be minimized or may just be hidden is not efficient.
Minimizing windows at all is inefficient. Just right-click (or control-click or click and hold) on the app icon in the dock and you get a list of all of the open windows in the app. Or bring the app to the front and go to its Window menu or use Cmd-` to cycle through the open windows. Minimization is for suckers or people with OCD.
Add an option to put all open windows in the Dock please and the "switchers" will love it.
And it'll make the dock a mile and a half long with three pixel icons...
Plus even Expose doesn't work well past 5-6 open windows (at least on my powerbook screen).
Perhaps for some. (fires up Expose. 1...2...) I've currently got 37 windows on my desktop, and I'm not having issues. Though I rarely use the "Show all windows" version of expose, just the "Show current application winhows".
The lack of a start menu was his big complaint. I know it is the "Mac Way", but the Finder really is an inefficient start menu substitute (for accessing lesser used programs). It requires many more user actions.
I agree with you here. The Finder and the Dock are poor app launchers and switchers. Launchbar and Quicksilver (which I mentioned a few posts above this one) are much better solutions.
Whoa settle down. The place for Expose is the mouse button (so long as you aren't using Apple's mouse.) F9/F10/F11 require moving your hands.
So set up hot corners via system preferences. Throw the pointer to one corner of the screen for show all windows, throw it in another for show all app windows, etc...
Generally speaking, you'll only need to look in ~/Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Preferences.
Then after a week or so you get something like Launchbar or Quicksilver so you never have to look at the Dock or think in terms of virtual desktops again. And then a month down the line you pick up something like the Touchstream so you never have to touch your mouse again...
It's the best setup you'll ever use.
That's funny... I've got an "a" to the left my "o", and a "d" to the left of my "h".
I guess I'm not typing in English...
JCL says, "Talk to the hand!"
Is that why they're teaching 1337 speak in grade schools these days?
Feel free to adjust your ideals to the lowest common denominator if you want, but I'll try to maintain some standards.
I don't give a rat's ass who it is. Implicit conversions between types like ints and strings doesn't qualify as strongly typed in my book.
it inturn influenced nothing else. In fact to program it, you needed a special keyboard.
You might want to have a look at J, the successor to APL. It uses standard glyphs and everything...
And Graham's thoughts on the Hindly-Milner type inference used in modern functional languages with REPLs (e.g. OCamlare...?
95% of the time you you type in no type annotations, and 4.99 of the other 5% of the time it's when you're using something like variant types. For the added safety (and other benefits, like making debugging with a REPL much easier) of the strong type system, Graham's position as stated above is greatly weakened.
scalar, array, hash
While these can be considered types (for a suitable definition of type), they are more generally considered structures. I believe the grandparent was speaking of Perl's a float is an int is a string is a bool depending on how you use it abilities, which make Perl a rather weakly typed language.
Yeah, but it looks like they stripped off a couple of ML's better features (currying and modules), dropped tail call optimization, and slapped scheme's syntax (or lack thereof) onto it. I'll have to read their rational a bit more carefully, but it seems like they're just trying to create a slightly better Lisp machine... Although Lisp could successfully escape the confines of the Lisp machine. BitC seems pretty iffy outside of Coyotos.
I wouldn't say it's useless, but I can't see what other people find so great about it either.
I downloaded the demo a while back and played with it for a while. The first five minutes of using it were pretty cool, but the novelty soon wore off, and the warts started showing through. For example, if your have been entering books into the library and then want to enter a game or a CD, you need to switch to the appropriate shelf before entering the UPC, or you get a Lookup Failed error. Why should I have to switch shelves? Why doesn't the software do it for me? It would also be nice if the data entry would default to the UPC/ISBN field rather than the name field (or at least have that be a user settable feature). If I'm going to be doing data entry, I'm going to want to enter the shortest string, which is almost always going to be the UPC/ISBN number. I know I had other gripes, but I've forgotten them by now.
And frankly, if you don't have an iSight/other barcode reader, the software just isn't worth the $40 price. I'm not sure it's worth that even with an iSight, but I haven't been able to evaluate that option so I can't say for sure.
Meh... just my 13 cents (you know, inflation). Maybe I'll look at it again if they release a v2.0 or so see if they've actually made it worth my coin.
Aw, come on. It's plenty good compared to DOS 4.0. Then again, a pile of index cards and a golf pencil is good compared to DOS 4.0.
Aw hell... Tiger's already shipping for the low, low price of $500.
I actually thought about doing this for a while. I really want to play with the Spotlight API... Just not $500 worth of want.
Because most IDEs do exactly what you say they shouldn't, and for good reason. Indenting blocks of text is so commonplace as to be pedantic;
Cutting and copying are also commonplace (moreso than indenting text I'd wager), yet we don't highlight the text we wish to operate on and type a C or a P in order to perform those actions. We use a special key combination instead.
Why should we expect different behavior from the tab key? Because emacs screwed up X many years ago?
Well, for one thing, it doesn't look like ass...
Not a big surprise, really. With the exception of HTML editing, the crop of newer editors for OS X (TextMate, SEE, Smultron, etc.) were making BBEdit look like that smelly old t-shirt stuck at the bottom of the drawer. You used to love that shirt, but now there are a whole lot of new shirts for you to wear, only without all of the rips and stains.
Since BBEdit is underfeatured and way overpriced for general text editing, Bore Bones had to do something to keep their name recognition alive...