Re: Another question

[hseaver@xxxxxxxx (Harmon Seaver)]

> Re Harmon's message about multitasking:
> > I absolutely agree that if I were running 3 computers, downloading
> enormous files, etc., I would be grateful for multitasking. But as for
> finding files, cutting & pasting, I do the second inside XyWrite, which I
> have highly customized and macroized to do such things efficiently. On

 I wish that I could do that inside of XY, but I don't find the XY "tree" and
other file macros very fast, for one thing. It's much faster to point at the
FM2 window, click on directories, then double click on a file, and it's open
-- nope, not that one, click on another, okay that's it -- then call it up into
XY to manipulate. As for cutting and pasting -- if it's just two files on my
harddrive, that's fine, then I use XY, of course, but when it's a on-line
database, or a CD-ROM, etc,, that is insanely slow. If it's on-line, you first
have to download it, then maybe even unzip it, and only then can you cut and
paste it within XY. And not even then with a lot of files that XY can't deal
with -- like long file names and unix formatted stuff that comes up a total
jumble in XY.
  However, in those cases you just cut and paste from the term window in OS/2
to the XY window, and it's done. And even from a CD-ROM, once you've found what
you want, it's on screen already, so you just cut and paste. Without
multitasking, you have to shell to dos, start up your cdrom app, which takes
forever, find the material, copy it to the hardrive, exit the cdrom app, open
XY, call up the file -- and then, only then, can you cut and paste it into your
other file.
  By the way, that HPFS file system in OS/2 sure is nice. You don't have to
use all those funky little weird file names that you can't figure out later
-- which is why I spend a lot of time looking for files,
I guess. Instead of something arcane like "teadeal.lst" in dos, I can use the
plain english "tea dealers list" in OS/2. Sure wish XY could handle that now.
Sigh!

> the machine I use, shelling to DOS is instant, leaves me with 624K at the
> DOS prompt, and I have an extremely fast and efficient utility. The

  Doesn't matter how fast you can shell to dos, if you have to open up other
apps afterwards, sometimes two or three, one after another.

> contrast between instant response in DOS and sludge in Windows that I use
> the latter for the few things I can't do in the former. There is

  Well, that's why they call it windoze, Nathan. OS/2 is much faster. And, I
think I said this before, but I'll say it again -- XY4 loads much faster on my
machine in OS/2 than it did under DOS/QEMM/DesqView. But I seldom do that
anymore anyway -- all the apps I use everyday just stay open all the time --
some minimized, but booted nonetheless.

Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx

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