🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4688@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <29800002@inmet> rich@inmet.inmet.com writes:
>> I am writing a programming environment (a smalltalk that is derived from 
>> Tim Budd's Little Smalltalk, but faster) for Ami.

>Cool.

[gulp...]

>> Finally, I am using ConMan's feature of opening a window as a file handle
>> by calling Open() with file name "con:wXXXX" where XXXX is the address of
>> the opened window.
>
>Please don't do this. There are ways of attaching a console device to a window,
>and I'm sure that someone will come up with one for you. If you depend on
>ConMan, you'll be unable to run your program on any system that doesn't have
>it. For something like Smalltalk, that'd be too bad.

   The Open() function is an AmigaDos function, as opposed to an Intuition
function.  It tries to open a file.  When it asks the console device for the
file, the console device opens the window and attatches the current console
handler to it, whether the handler is the old con:, the arp con:, or conman's
con:.  The program will run either with or without conman, but the interface
will change.  Generic, unadulterated console handlers are such a pain!

   There is also a technique for opening an Intuition window, and attatching
a console device to it (I think I saw it in the Intuition manual v1.1).  
This will also give you the resident console handler.  It is debatable whether
you want to use a console handler at all.  Remember that relying on it will
cause unpredictable changes in the environment you are creating.  You might 
want to just write your own, if you want to support cut/paste, the clipboard,
or "full screen editing", because you will be forced to deal with the window
as a file, and will not be able to cursor up to edit parts of a program.  
( I am make an assumption here that may not be accurate.  If the con: is just
for program I/O please ignore this part.)

>-- 
>Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>
>`-_-'
> 'U` "Really, a video game is nothing more than a Skinner box."
>       -- Peter Merel <pete@basser.oz>

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