Questions about windows support

[Nick Sabalausky]

"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message 
news:mailman.812.1329855805.20196.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:50:24AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> [...]
>> I literally grew up on command-lines[1]. But despite that, I still
>> much prefer GUIs for anything a GUI reasonably works for: Like file
>> browsers, DB admin, manual DB queries, debuggers, Tortoise*, etc.
>> (although for web server configuration I've come to vastly prefer
>> config files - MUCH easier to remotely manage, plus the settings for
>> files/paths are necessarily tied to the file/path *name*, not the
>> physical file, so you don't kave to keep messing with them every time
>> something's moved/renamed/deleted/recreated)
>
> OK, this isn't exactly GUI, but have you tried mc?
>

Umm, I don't *think* so, unless you count mcedit. For a breif while I used 
mcedit as my preferred remote-file text editor, since it was text-mode (so 
it worked through ssh) and was slightly better than nano/pico. But I haven't 
had much need for it ever since I realized I could do this:

$sshfs user at domain:/ mount-point
$kate mount-point/remote-path &

I'll take a look though.

> I remember in the good ole DOS days, Norton Commander (of which mc is a
> clone) was one of the best things around. It made DOS usable. In fact,
> even pleasant.
>

Hmm, if that's like Total Commander on Windows, then I don't think I would 
like it. I do *love* Total Commander's multi-file renaming, but that feature 
is really the only reason I keep it around.

Heh, as bad as this might sound, I think what I basically want is more or 
less Windows Explorer on linux ;)  (Including the customizations I've 
installed, like "DOS Prompt Here" and Tortoise*) And yea, Explorer works 
under wine, but it's kinda like running a GTK app in Windows - but worse 
since Windows GTK apps at least *know* what OS they're really running on.

>
>> Although that said, even the Windows file manager has been plummeting
>> downhill ever since Vista. I don't know wtf MS has been thinking.
>
> I hate the windows file manager with a passion. It's so difficult to
> make it display things properly, there's no way (not easily anyway) to
> specify a glob filter in a huge directory, change sorting criteria with
> a keystoke, etc.. I find `ls | grep` much more palatable than that
> painful 1-pixel wide horizontal scrollbar that leaps several pages per
> pixel when you're trying to find something in a truly huge directory, I
> mean folder.
>

Yea. While Windows Explorer is my favorite file manager, even I'll readily 
admit it's not perfect:

- It keeps locking files/dirs for no apperent reason and keeps them locked.

- Sometimes it has a hard time in dirs with lots of files, especially in 
thumbnail mode.

- Search is slow.

- It doesn't have a built-in "Extension" column, just that useless "Type" 
column. There's a third-party extension to add an "ext" column, but it's 
confused by zip files and it conflicts with the columns added by Tortoise*, 
so in many folders, instead of my "ext" column, it often gives me this 
useless "Product Version" column instead.

But implementation issues aside (which I've more or less gotten used to), I 
like the basic UI itself a lot. In XP anyway. They really fucked up its UI 
in Vista and 7.

>
>> Keyboard/mouse switching comes pretty naturally to me. Part of it's
>> probably years of practice, and the other part is that I use
>> trackballs which tend to mostly stay put.
>
> I used to do a lot of keyboard/mouse switching too. Until I switched to
> ratpoison, a window manager that doesn't require the mouse. Since then
> I've found that my speed almost doubled.
>
> Keyboard/mouse switching is much better when it's a laptop with that
> "nipple" thing in the middle of the keyboard. In fact, that's the only
> case of mouse-switching that is comparable in speed to a keyboard-only
> interface. Unless, of course, you're trying to manipulate graphical
> stuff like draw freehand curves, in which case you'll want to be on the
> mouse 99% of the time anyway. For discrete tasks like typing or
> navigating menus, keyboard shortcuts are unbeatable.
>

I like to call it the clit mouse. It beats the shit out of trackpads (I hate 
those things with a passion), but I still find them a pain compared to mice 
and my trusty Logitech trackball. So I'm the opposite of you there: I 
actually find it much *easier* to switch between keyboard and trackball than 
keyboard and "clit mouse" despite the increased distance. Maybe I'm just 
weird.

>
>> [1] First AppleSoft BASIC and occasionally the built-in memory-editor
>> and AppleSoft Logo. Later, MS-DOS 6-ish and occasionally gwbasic
>> (normally used QBASIC instead, though)
> [...]
>
> Ooooh! Another Apple II veteran! Ah, the good ole Apple II. Believe it
> or not, my dad actually still has a couple o' 30-year-old Apple II's
> that he actually *still uses*. He wrote a little personal accounting app
> in Dbase, and has been using it for the last 3 decades. Never felt the
> need to upgrade. Of course, now he also has a modern-day laptop and
> modern PCs in the office. But that old faithful Apple II is still
> chugging away...
>

Wow. Nice. I have an Apple IIc in a pile on the floor here to my right. 
Haven't had time to play with it in forever though. It's the same model I 
grep up on (IIc), but not the same physical machine. *God* I wish I hadn't 
sold my floppies along with my original system. I really wish I still had 
all that old data of mine. Probably all gone forever now: Overwritten, 
decayed, or in a landfill. :(

I'm actually a huge Apple hater ever since I got fed up with my 10.2 eMac 
and the whole "Return of Jobs" world and product lines in general. But I 
*always* consider Woz's Apple II line to be the big, giant, glaring 
exception in Apple's portfolio.