| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ FILE MANAGER / KARTEIEN VERWALTUNG ★ |
File Manager (AMTIX) | File Manager (Popular Computing Weekly) | Karteienverwaltung / Verwaltung von Karteien |
One of the advantages of Amstrad's success in Europe is that it widens the potential entertainment area for decent programs a good example is this tape based database from France. As a utility it seems to be sensibly priced for its capabilines - it supports 200 records of 20 fields and 240 characters per record and there are competent sort and search facilities. It doesn't have the sophistication or the flexibility of Masierfile but not everyone wants something that complex. Where File Manager does score heavily is in the style of presentation. It uses windows and icon driven front end so much in vogue with 16 bit machines at the moment although without the mouse control - Wip rather than Wimp I suppose, which I'm not sure isn't an improvement as far as mnemonics go.
Personally I have my doubts about the true value of these things - icons are supposed to make it easy for an absolute beginner to control the program but the system relies on our ability to express abstract concepts in a recognisable pictorial form. Everything can fall down if it is hard to guess what the icons represent - for example a camera is used to stand for 'copy a record' which is something that only makes sense in retrospect. I also wonder if they are not a luxury when you have to fit your data into a limited amount of Ram. Still it is a welcome change to see effort being put into making serious programs as attractive and user friendly as possible and in that sense it has much to teach 'professional' CP/M release. Tony Kendle , Popular Computing Weekly |
|  |
