🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <hotelca-2008950243090001@192.0.2.1>,
Hotel California <hotelca@cris.com> wrote:
>
>> In message <DDH2nv.2y3@news.cis.umn.edu>, 
>> Jeff Halverson <halv0019@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> [snip]
>> > My favorite quirk in Apples concepts of the GUI is the trashcan!  
>> > Have you ever tried to explain that concept to a beginner?  "Okay, 
>> > If you want to throw away a file, pick it up, and drop it into the
>> trash..."  
>> > Simple, enough isn't it?  Then it comes time to show them how to 
>> > eject the disk.  "Okay, pick up the disk and drop it in the trash..."   
>> > "NO!  I JUST SPENT HOURS ON THAT DOCUMENT SAVED TO THE DISK!"
>
>The reason for dragging the disk to the trash is actually pretty logical
>if you look at it in 1984 terms.  In 1984 the Mac didn't have a hard
>drive.  It had a 400k floppy.  To copy files 'tween floppies you chose
>"Eject Disk" from the whatever menu (I never had a 128k but they had a
>System hall of fame in the MacWorld's Mac Secrets book so I don't remember
>which menu it was under) which left a ghost image on the desktop.  The
>disk was ejected but not unmounted.  This way you could then insert
>another disk and drag a file from the disk to the ghost image or vice
>versa.  You then swapped disks as necessary.  Then to remove the image
>from the desktop you drug it to the trash.  To just eject a disk without
>copying it you still had to eject it then drag it to the trash.  Then in a
>later system revision you could skip the step of ejecting it so that
>dragging it to the trash would both eject and unmount the disk.  With
>System 7 the Put Away command appeared.  It ejects and unmounts disks and
>also puts files you drag to the desktop to work on back to the folders
>they came from.  The proper way to unmount a disk (most definitely NOT the
>same as ejecting which people confuse and the eject command does nicely)
>is to use Put Away, the drag to the trash is just a shortcut held over
>from System 1.

Yech.  They could have saved themselves a lot of hassle if they had
implemented it similarly to the way you described it below.

>Now for a small piece of history.  As they were preparing System 1 for
>shipping they had a different method.  You used the "Alternate Disk."  It
>was a virtual disk you used for copying.  You would drag the file to copy
>onto the alternate disk and then eject the disk.  No ghost image would
>appear.  Then you insert the disk to copy onto and drag the files from the
>alternate disk onto the floppy.  The files would be switched, swaping
>disks as necessary.  It was eliminated by the ghost image method not long
>before the 128 started shipping.  In fact it still appeared in the Manual
>and in the instruction program that came with the 128.

Neither way is ideal.  The ideal way is to have an alternate disk icon
(that appears as a ghost image) always on the desktop whenever a disk
is present in the drive.  You drag the files you want to copy from
whatever source to the alternate disk.  If the source was a hard drive
or a second disk, the copy would proceed as if the destination were
the primary disk icon.  If the source was the primary disk, the system
would perform the single-floppy copy and would automatically eject the
disks for you (and prompt you to insert the other disk) as it needed
to.

If necessary, the system could, upon insertion of the destination
disk, open it and have you select the target directory for it.

-- 
Kevin Brown                                     kevin@frobozz.sccsi.com
This is your .signature virus: < begin 644 .signature (9V]T8VAA(0K0z end >
            This is your .signature virus on drugs: <>
                        Any questions?