Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
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From: rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: The Amiga's Future
Message-ID: <1991Jun8.015727.24128@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
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Organization: The Internet
References: <mjr.676327850@uther> <1991Jun7.233654.24493@news.iastate.edu> <2v6Hypzp@cs.psu.edu>
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 91 01:57:27 GMT
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In article <2v6Hypzp@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes:
>I wouldn't say that.  For most applications non-preemptive
>multitasking works fine, and it's not nearly as limiting when compared
>to only having a clipboard that can only handle ASCII text.  That's
>one strike against the most advanced OS on a PC.

  The Clipboard isn't limitied to Ascii text. It's general purpose.
It's as simple as passing a pointer to a buffer containing data (char *)
to post a clip. (actually, it's a little more involved, you have to set
up an IORequest, etc. The point is, the OS doesn't care what the data is.
It doesn't mask bit 7, and it doesn't remove ctrl-codes, it simply
holds the clip for another program to use.)

>      The Amiga's clipboard cannot be fixed, as it is too unsupported and
>   weak to be fixed.  The clipboard needs to be totally replaced by something
>   that supports transferring of graphic images from one application to
>   another, independent of resolution or color format.  However, even if this
>   were done, and the clipboard was replaced by something far better, it 
>   would stile pale compared to the clipboard of the Macintosh simply because
>   the MAC's clipboard is supported by nearly all applications.
>
>How unfortunate.  A functional Clipboard is probably worth more to
>most people than being able to display 60 frames per second.
^^^^
  Speak for yourself. I have never needed a clipboard. I use pipes.
It's nice to be able to proclaim what people want in a way that
supports your arguement but it doesn't hold water. The clipboard is
a fairly minor feature in the grand scheme of OS's. It doesn't
make or break an entire platform.
  I have used Macs, IBMs, and lots of other computers. The clipboard
was never really of much use. For instance, if I made a diagram
in a drawing program, I'd much rather have it saved to a permanent _named_
file on the disk, then simply switch to the publishing program and 
load it in.
\flame {Enter tangent}
  It would be nice on a multitasking computer if you could simply
cut a rectangle out of one window and drag the entire image
into the other window and drop it in. Still, I'd like to have the
safety of just saving my work to a named file on disk.
  Now on a single tasking computer (pre-multifinder Macs), the clipboard seems
much like a pipe, or like Unix's use of /tmp.
  I guess what I'm saying is, cut/pasting from consoles a timersaver, but
I wouldn't want to cut large amounts of data (like entire bitmaps)
that I wanted to keep around.
\endtangent

 BTW, if you want clip screen data, SNAP works perfectly. You can
snap a portion of the screen, save to clipboard or IFF file, and load
it from another app. It's not really C='s fault. The clipboard works
fine on the Amiga, developers just never used it.

>-Mike
>


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