[GEM Development] My previous e-mail...

[Ben A L Jemmett]

> I'm about to being a transition of my Unix computing from Mandrake 8.2 to
> Mandrake 9.1 (laptop and old desktop) and NetBSD (new Pentium3 test
> machine).  I had considered Red Hat, but someone gave me all the Mandrake
> stuff for free so...you know...I'll use that.

That's as good a reason as any :)  I Do Not Like Red Hat.  Not one little
bit.  I tried it back around 3 or 5 or something like that and the install
was slow, clunky and irritating; 9 isn't any better, except if you count in
shininess.  I only installed it because I need to do get some work running
with it.  I prefer Slackware for my machines...  NetBSD when I want to play
with a *BSD machine.  Solaris when I'm working.

> Oh yes.  You are in the UK too.  For me a packet of safeway cookies came
> within targeting range and they suffered badly.  It's been a strange day.

It's been an expensive day for me.  Had to write a UKP1200 cheque to cover a
housemate's rent because of some banking cockup.  Still haven't found a
replacement for the housemate that left in June...  At least my only lecture
today was cancelled.  In terms of food, I finally ate breakfast at 2 p.m. so
I think a nice big greasy fry-up for me now, then down the pub for a couple
of jars if I can rustle up any interest from my housemates.  Apologies to
any vegetarians or teetotallers who might be offended by that comment :)

> Notes (totally unrelated to everything I have just been talking about)...
> Ben, you know the way your desktop automatically detects drives?  It's a
> great feature.  The only slightly annoying thing is that way they all
appear
> on the top left of the desktop.  It would be great if the system somehow
> sorted them into a neat line after detection.

Yeah, it's a matter of getting the code to fit.  There's all sorts of stuff
that I wrote the code for, but would have to cut stuff out to make it link.
When John got a Pacific version compiling I meant to port my changes over to
it, but didn't get around to it before he released his GEM/1-derived
version.  At some point I'll take that and add the drive detection, Send To
(Open With) menu, Applications window, the Program Group code I wrote etc.
It's just quite a while off.

What I might do is take my drive detection code, polish off the known-rough
edge (it remembers which were configured manually and which were automatic,
and isn't supposed to remember the automatic ones so that it doesn't persist
across session, but something's broken there) and add that to John's code,
adding in the automatic positioning stuff.  But that still might take a
while -- the days when I could sit down in the evening and crank out a Send
To menu by bedtime are long gone I'm afraid.

> Ken...what happened to him?  He vanished a couple of years ago, but does
> anyone know where he went?

Ken has never been subscribed to the list, so as soon as the archives went
invisible at Yahoo (shortly after we moved to simpits) he's been
out-of-the-loop list-wise.  I haven't had correspondence with him myself in
quite a while either.

Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)