Re: Decent ADA compiler on a Mac

[collins@cs.wm.edu (Bob Collins)]

In article <VLADIMIR.95Mar21194513@speedy.intrepid.com>,
vladimir@speedy.intrepid.com (Vladimir Vukicevic) wrote:

> This is (IMHO) one major shortcoming of the MacOS interface. If you
> want to do something fast, there's no way to do it. If you want to get
> into the "Foo:Blah:Bar:Quux:Fap:Blat" folder, you have to click-click-
> click-click through all those folders, instead of simply typing "cd
> Foo:Blah:...".

The MacOS is a moving target. Currently, there are numerous utilities
available (from Apple and from third parties) to mitigate this
problem. Most involve hierarchical menus. For example, place an
alias of a directory or volume in a special menu. Then one can
travel five-deep through hierarchical menus to a destination
directory or file. No double-clicking. One clever paradigm involves
the iconic representations of directories (folders). Depress the
mouse button while the cursor is over a folder. After a short pause,
a menu pops up containing the contents of the folder. This pop-up
menu is also hierarchical and can be used for deeply nested items.

The advantages of these systems: increased manual dexterity
(learned in order to traverse hierarchical menus), saving of some
memory cells, and the use of longer directory names (no repetitive
typing). The disadvantage: we spend Ada time reading about interfaces.

Bob Collins, collins@cs.wm.edu