[Coco] YouTube video of the recent MShell Beta

Steven Hirsch snhirsch at gmail.com
Mon Nov 17 18:55:28 EST 2014


On Mon, 17 Nov 2014, Bill Pierce via Coco wrote:

>
> Steven, I'm starting to see what you mean in opening the OS9 
> directories. I've been doing some bug chasing and in doing so, I've been 
> copying a bunch of files from the PC drive to OS9 so I can catch the bug 
> and I'm getting really tired of clicking (Open Directory) on every OS9 
> directory change. The PC drive directory changes already act in the 
> manner you mentioned since they have no contect menus. I may rethink how 
> this works and change some actions. Maybe <cntrl>click opens the "dir 
> context menu" and plain click opens the dir. This would make the PC and 
> OS9 dir changes consistant, RSDOS file systems have no dirs so it's not 
> an issue there..... What do you guys think?

I'm mired in that late-80s / early-90s "point and shoot" school of file 
management.  Bear in mind that most of the utilities at that time ran in 
text mode under MS-DOS.  "Point" was generally arrow keys to move in a 
panel and TAB to switch the current panel to the other side.  "Shoot" was

Enter --> Enter directory if on a directory, otherwise perform some 
default action (like Midnight Commander) or maybe do nothing.

Other Key Combos or Function Key --> Perform a specific well-known 
function on the highlighted file.

I'm also used to being able to "tag" some arbitrary number of files in a 
panel and perform a bulk operation (e.g. copy to the other panel's 
directory).  Bulk operations are (again) tied to Function Keys.

I honestly do not know how well - if at all - this maps to what's 
comfortable on a Coco3.  Just wanted to get across the user interface I'm 
used to FWIW.


I'm not opposed to using a pointing device, but would probably find 
keyboard entry quicker and simpler for navigation.

Steve


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