MessageOn Thursday, December 14, 2006, 5:34 PM Chris wrote:
Precisely! :))
I don't want to prolong this OT discussion (so thanks for bringing it back
on-topic) ;)) but you're absolutely right - why make things _so_ damn
complicated for the developer when all you need is something (as you suggest)
as simple as a folder with templates in it. Plus then, the painfully obvious
way to 'disable' the feature would be simply to empty all the templates out of
the folder.
Plus, has anyone noticed that creating a 'New' spreadsheet, Word doc, etc.
is all just the same thing? You simply create *any* 'new' document and change
the extension!
Ah, Windows... ;))
I'm afraid that is not absolutely true. In Win 95 the New menu is loaded from
the folder at %windir%\New. For NT, the contents are loaded from the Registry.
Every extension declared under HKCR with a key named ShellNew should have an
entry there. The key also tells the system where to find a template, what to
write to a file, etc. The only default empty entry is the Notepad text
document. It is 0 KB (it is the one i use and change extensions, by the way).
The rest actually write something. i.e. the "new Zip file" entry writes on a
file:
PK
that is, an empty zip file.
The problem is that the first 10 extensions in history declared with a ShellNew
key are the ones that you usually see. If you want your entry in that list, by
hand, you have to erase the top of the list. That is why at M$ make that
TweakUI little program they show off in msdn.
I do not even rememeber where i read they switched from the Folder to the
Registry alternative because they notticed users used to put their own
templates over there. How they dared! In that article it even said that it was
fancier this way...
People that write HTML, CSS or some data files also uses this feature to easily
get empty texts. We are few, but we use it.
Off topic:
I have a Haiku installation running smootly on my Laptop. I can load BeIDE and
keep learning both the Be API and the Haiku one. Using the gcc 2.95.3 by Oliver
Tappe i have no problems. (well, my programs are "Hello world" long, but my
happiness is as big as the NewOS source code)
Thank you all. You make me believe even an architect like me can know what
happens inside my machine, and how the things should be over there and over
here. Congratulations!
Miguel Zúñiga