> From nigel Wed Nov  5 08:12:52 1997
> Subject: Re: New Booter available
> To: cwood@ichips.intel.com (Colin Wood)
> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 08:12:52 +1100 (EST)
> In-Reply-To: <9711041916.AA39868@pdxcs101.intel.com> from "Colin Wood" at Nov 4, 97 11:16:50 am


	Hi Colin. Thanks for the feedback.

...
> > 	Changes from the previous version are:
> > * Now uses a preferences file, rather than embedding settings in
> >   the program's resources
> 
> This appears to work just fine.  It should also eliminate the need to
> quit the Booter and restart it in order to save settings (I think I tested
> this last night, but the Booter crashed so it's a bit hard to tell :-)

	Dave Huang found a repeatable Preferences file related bug that I
will have to fix, so there will be a b6 coming out soon. It is related to
an incomplete Preferences file which can be caused by booting before saving
the Preferences (which shouldn't be necessary).


> > * Some user interface improvements
> 
> Pretty nice on the whole, but I'd suggest a couple of changes (keep in
> mind that these are purely my aesthetic reasoning and may not reflect
> anyone else's opinion):
> 
> 1) Get rid of the hyphens following the MacOS and BSD radio button
> selections...there's really no need, and I can't think of any similar Mac
> application that looks that way.

	I wanted something in there to hint at the fast that what follows
(i.e. the Filename & Set or Kernel, Partition, ID, Ask, Enabled) is only
applicable to the particular radio button which was selected.

	Maybe a thin horizontal line dividing the two distinct sections
would be better? Or maybe a box? Or maybe this is not needed at all?

> 2) Vertically align the first two text input boxes in the BSD section, the
> current misalignment makes the interface look a little cluttered.

	Didn't realise that they weren't aligned. Will fix.


> > * Handles kernels in Mac OS files much better
> 
> I didn't test this, but just wondering, what improvements did you make
> here?

	There is now a "Set" button which allows selection of a kernel file
anywhere in the Mac OS (not just the current directory). The Mac OS file
reading code now uses non-Unix-style IO commands, which means, among other
things, that it can automatically open aliases to kernel files.

...
> For the most part, this seemed to work just fine.  One small nit/bug that
> I did find tho:  if you happen to specify a SCSI ID number that doesn't
> exist (like SCSI ID#0 on my Q700 - the internal is at 3 for some reason I
> can't quite fathom, and I forgot to set the ID, so it defaulted to 0), you
> get an error like:
> 
> Error on SCSIRead#2 (0)
> 
> I think.  It appeared that the Booter hung at this point, but it safely
> died a couple of seconds later instead.

	Yes. It does a sleep(5) and exits.

>  Although this isn't the worst
> behaviour (I mean, I didn't have to reboot ;-)  it might be nicer to get a
> little error message like "You're an idiot, please choose a SCSI device
> which exists!" or something like that (assuming this is even possible).
> It's a shame that everything needs to be bulletproofed this way, but it
> does make for a more friendly user experience.

	I will add this into the TO-DO.txt file!

-- 
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