More Thread

[Brent Neal]

At 0:00 -0500 2/9/02, Max wrote:
>Omni specifically acknowledges:
>
>"We are working to make a tool with all the fun of Symantec's 
>much-loved and missed More TM application for Mac OS, but we're 
>going to be adding new features in later versions that no outliner 
>has ever had."
>
>I think that those who know outliners acknowledge More as the best 
>of breed and worthy of emulation. I don't know why anyone would take 
>a position against this. The programmers at Omni aren't novices, and 
>aren't constrained by the widget paradigm.

Emulation, yes. Slavishly so, I hope not.  OO is a good program 
because it provides most of the features necessary for an outliner 
app.  It is a *great* app because of its simple, easy to understand 
user interface, and Omni's attention to detail. I have no problem 
with new features being added to the program to scratch people's 
particular itches. I *do* however have a problem with someone coming 
in and basically saying that OO should be a MORE rewrite.  We should 
want better than that, and the guys at Omni are doing a great job 
giving it to us.

In regards to widgets: Not only are the guys at Omni not novices, 
they are probably some of the best Cocoa programmers extant.  Your 
implication in the last sentence above shows a certain naivety about 
programming. Just because they *can* do something doesn't mean they 
*should*.  OmniOutliner is by no means their bread and butter. The 
Omni guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most of their cash 
flow comes from porting games and WebObjects consulting. Why on earth 
would they want to maintain a entire widget set, for a single app 
that isn't their primary source of income? They already maintain an 
extremely useful set of widget classes to *extend* AppKit.  For what 
J. Davis suggested,which was throwing out the AppKit entirely, it 
would require significant man-hours just to keep the interface code 
in sync with Apple's low-level stuff.  Not to mention the time it 
would take to write it the first time around. And those man-hours 
would not be fun man-hours.  The whole purpose of Cocoa in general 
and the AppKit specifically is to try to maximise code reuse. This is 
as close to the Holy Grail of object-oriented programming as it gets 
... and someone suggests  *throwing it away* because they don't think 
the system can give a "rich user interface."  Oh, please.





>
>Perhaps you could state your reasons a little more clearly for why 
>Omni shouldn't pursue a More-like app-- or a clone plus. It doesn't 
>have to work like More. It just has to have mark and gather, clone, 
>fold etc.

Read my post more carefully. I never said Omni shouldn't pursue a 
MORE-like app. I said they shouldn't blindly copy MORE.  As I said 
before, I am quite happy with where OO is, and excited about the 
direction its going.

B
-- 
Brent Neal
Concurrent Computing Laboratory for Materials Simulations
Dept. of Physics - Dept. of Computer Science
Louisiana State University
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