-=> On 28 Feb 96  17:15:18 Peter Fitzsimmons said to Gary Chambers <=-


 PF> System modal should rarely be used by an application -- and it pisses
 PF> me off greatly.  For example "error out of diskspace,  retry?" is a
 PF> useless system modal dialog,  since you can't switch to another
 PF> program to free up some disk space.

I think the real problem is not so much 'system modal' but that the options
do not include appropriate ones ...

Your printer is out of paper ...

I want to say either:
   OK, but I'm currently multitasking, and I'll fix that later, remind me
   in 10 minutes.
   (The printer is in another room, and I don't always waant to get up
    immediately.)
or
  I know that the printer is out of paper. I'm out of paper, and office world
  is closed till tuesday, cos monday is a bank holiday - I'm not planning to
  reboot because of this message - there's 10 other apps running.
  you can remind me ONCE A DAY and NOT more.

I know you can call up the printer and tell the spooler to go on hold,
but what I really want is for all system modal dialogs to have an option
to send them away for a specified amount of time.

I just go into a blind rage in response to messages which say

 'your system has collapsed in a heap, OK?'
 Its not ok for my system to collapse in a heap. Never.

I always want to have the option of doing nothing about the problem - because
frequently I can't do anything.

Typically 'insert disk 5 OK?' is a problem - I have inserted disk 5, but its
faulty. I need another option to tell it I can't insert disk 5, so it can
fail gracefully.

I agree that in general, system modal dialogs are inapropriate in a
multitasking OS. Even for hard disk failure. I have multiple disks,
and might be able to recover. Inablity to switch tasks is about the only
justifiable reason for a system modal dialog.

Andrew





... Ooops!...Got my floppy caught in my PKZipper...
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