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> Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows? That it took 10 versions to finally get a resizeable command line terminal that

by tdicola 11y ago

> Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows? That it took 10 versions to finally get a resizeable command line terminal that you can copy and paste text within.

stinos 11y ago
To be fair: it could be resized (though in an extremely non-user friendly way) and copy/paste has been possible since a long time (no idea since which version, and again, it wasn't particularly user-friendly at all)
- grimman 11y ago
  Copy+paste has been possible at least since Win2k. But yes, in a very user-unfriendly manner.
AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
This. It was just a small thing, that every now and then made life a little more difficult than it needed to be when you tried to paste something and got ~V :D
fl0wenol 11y ago
The console was broken for a long time primarily to make it possible to do full-screen VGA text modes for NTVDM-requiring apps. Enabling either or both required elevated hardware privileges so they shoved the whole rendering thing into CSRSS and it gave us the shatter attack and (later) no cut/paste as thanks. I think we're paying for a mistake made upon the alter of backwards compatibility back when asking someone to use virtualization made you sound like a nut (and back before Microsoft had Hyper-V to offer as an alternative to customers who couldn't or wouldn't budge).
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > I think we're paying for a mistake made upon the alter of backwards compatibility There's a book called The Old New Thing (I think I heard about it here on HN, haven't had a chance to get it yet) that discusses a lot of quirks that Windows has and how they came about. Usually there was a purposeful decision behind it, like you suggest with backwards compatibility. It'd be interesting to see if this particular case is addressed in the book.
  - shitloadofbooks 11y ago
    The Old New Thing is Raymond Chen's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ and the book is excerpts and articles from his Blog (with some additional content no doubt). Raymond is/was a compatibility engineer at Microsoft. He was responsible for "shimming" a bunch of hacks into Windows to ensure large applications which relied on undocumented API calls wouldn't break when they overhauled libraries in a new version of Windows.
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      Ah that's right, I think someone in a comment linked to an article on his blog and that's how I found out about the book.
    - sukilot 11y ago
      I didn't realize that was his specific job. The blog title is so brilliant.
pjmlp 11y ago
Control Menu => Properties => Options => Quick Edit Mode I can no longer remember, but I think it was already there back in the 16 bit days, or at very least Windows 95.
- robotresearcher 11y ago
  A UI triumph.

by tdicola 11y ago

> Can you think of anything else basic that is annoying as heck about Windows? That it took 10 versions to finally get a resizeable command line terminal that you can copy and paste text within.

stinos 11y ago

To be fair: it could be resized (though in an extremely non-user friendly way) and copy/paste has been possible since a long time (no idea since which version, and again, it wasn't particularly user-friendly at all)

grimman 11y ago
Copy+paste has been possible at least since Win2k. But yes, in a very user-unfriendly manner.

AdeptusAquinas 11y ago

This. It was just a small thing, that every now and then made life a little more difficult than it needed to be when you tried to paste something and got ~V :D

fl0wenol 11y ago

The console was broken for a long time primarily to make it possible to do full-screen VGA text modes for NTVDM-requiring apps. Enabling either or both required elevated hardware privileges so they shoved the whole rendering thing into CSRSS and it gave us the shatter attack and (later) no cut/paste as thanks. I think we're paying for a mistake made upon the alter of backwards compatibility back when asking someone to use virtualization made you sound like a nut (and back before Microsoft had Hyper-V to offer as an alternative to customers who couldn't or wouldn't budge).

joshuapants 11y ago
> I think we're paying for a mistake made upon the alter of backwards compatibility There's a book called The Old New Thing (I think I heard about it here on HN, haven't had a chance to get it yet) that discusses a lot of quirks that Windows has and how they came about. Usually there was a purposeful decision behind it, like you suggest with backwards compatibility. It'd be interesting to see if this particular case is addressed in the book.
- shitloadofbooks 11y ago
  The Old New Thing is Raymond Chen's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ and the book is excerpts and articles from his Blog (with some additional content no doubt). Raymond is/was a compatibility engineer at Microsoft. He was responsible for "shimming" a bunch of hacks into Windows to ensure large applications which relied on undocumented API calls wouldn't break when they overhauled libraries in a new version of Windows.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    Ah that's right, I think someone in a comment linked to an article on his blog and that's how I found out about the book.
  - sukilot 11y ago
    I didn't realize that was his specific job. The blog title is so brilliant.

pjmlp 11y ago

Control Menu => Properties => Options => Quick Edit Mode I can no longer remember, but I think it was already there back in the 16 bit days, or at very least Windows 95.

robotresearcher 11y ago
A UI triumph.