About This Particular Macintosh 6.04 - eDisk

All that’s needed now is for Microsoft to provide a “Use MDI” check box in the Office Preferences,which are located in the Tools menu just where you expect to find them. With thischecked, Mac Office would take over the desktop and provide a “Multiple Document Interface.”Since no other Mac applications allow multiple windows to be open at the same time,this would be a big hit.BBEditThis text editor is powerful and versatile 6 , and I probably use it more than any other piece ofsoftware, except maybe Mailsmith 7 . Therein lies the problem: I’ve just become sick ofBBEdit. See, I understand that part of its philosophy is getting the job done without a lot offlash or bloat, but if I’ll be using this piece of software day and night, I want it to be entertaining!As the number of functions in a program grows, so should its on-screen appearance. BBEdithas a huge set of menus, but it hides cool features, like shifting by spaces and reverse searching,behind the standard menu items until you hold down modifier keys. How drab.Bare Bones could start by adding icons for each menu item. Pulling down the Markup menucould be like a trip to Le Louvre 8 . Hover over the “Inline Elements” submenu if you likeimpressionists. Hold down the Option or Shift keys to reveal hidden commands and theiricons. Commands you seldom use would gradually move towards the bottoms of menus,eventually disappearing into the store rooms of the museum. Each month the featured commandsat the tops of the menus would change, rather like a rotating gallery. Individual menuitems could play unique sounds when selected; write an AppleScript to automate a task andhear the notes for each command come alive as music 9 .BBEdit should have customizable toolbars just like Word’s. It might be difficult to designicons for commands like “Enter Replace String” and “Find Again (Reverse),” and I’d probablyhave trouble remembering them, but that’s not the point. When I’m working in a texteditor, I don’t care much about getting work done. (I have Office for that.) I want to look atpretty icons, miniature works of art. Think about the joy of creating sets of toolbars withrelated buttons. They’d have to be flat, not look like buttons, to avoid becoming eyesores, of6. http://www.atpm.com/5.02/page11.shtml7. http://www.atpm.com/5.01/page8.shtml8. http://www.atpm.com/2.06/page13.shtml9. http://www.atpm.com/5.10/music.shtmlATPM 6.04 ← 20 →Columns: What I Really Think