Fitaly has to be general -- as opposed to specific

Re: Should it be that general? -- Casper Lassenius
Posted by Jean Ichbiah ^Ž , Sun, Feb 09, 2003, 13:59:08		Top	Forum

There are shareware utilities to help with the Bluetooth problem aswell. I think the fact that there are popular utilities for solving both the silencing and the Bluetooth on/off issue is indicates the need to make these two operations much easier than they currently are on the Palm. [...]
The way I saw it implemented in my mind was by adding "Toggle BT" and "Toggle Sound" as special macros to assign to slides. General? No. Workable yes. And fits with the Palm philosophy of solving common and important problems instead of all possible ones at a general level.

I think Fitaly has to be general. We have to provide general mechanisms but stay away from things that are too specific to a given application. The solution you propose would involve having a long list of special macros to become general.

Prior to OS5, you could use MacroPlay and have a macro assigned to a shortcut. Then, you could assign the shortcut to a slide in Fitaly. But MacroPlay does not do OS5 and is another $25 -- expensive for occasional users.

It would not take much to be more general in Fitaly: We could solve your problem with commands such as

‹launch›Prefs
‹tap 116,40› -- communications
‹tap 40,70› -- Bluetooth
‹tap 100,27› -- On/Off choice
‹tap 100,35› -- On
‹tap 15,150› -- Done
‹lastapp› -- back to last application

This could do it with only two new primitives, namely, launch and tap.

I also think that the launch macro could lead to problems. Imagine doing a slide that by mistake got too long, and then finding yourself in another application instead of with a wrong character.

This Pandora's box is already widely open: Right now, you can already create havoc by a sequence of ‹commands› that invoke beaming hotsync and whatever. There is no way to invent fire without inventing the possibility of burning as well. You have to trust users to make good use of fire.

Jean Ichbiah