Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!brian
From: brian@natinst.com (Brian H. Powell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 6.03 and Time Manager
Message-ID: <3825@natinst.natinst.com>
Date: 28 Jul 89 21:30:30 GMT
References: <4708@tank.uchicago.edu>
Organization: National Instruments, Austin, TX
Lines: 27

In article <4708@tank.uchicago.edu>, rfl@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Bob Loewenstein)
writes:
> Does this mean that the Time Manager was(is) unusable in all systems
> prior to 6.03?

     In general, no.  The Time Manager had some very serious problems before
6.0.3.  Mouse clicking, for instance, is handled by the Time Manager.  It
works fine.  However, if you start doing other stuff with the Time Manager,
things don't work fine.
     We had lots of Time Manager problems while developing the latest version
of LabVIEW.  Besides explicit bugs we've found in the Time Manager (such as
the possibility of gross inaccuracies in time manager scheduling), we often
experienced what we called "sticky mouse".  Sometimes, the Time Manager
wouldn't schedule things waiting in its queue.  The queue was fine, something
was just stuck.
     An example of what this means, is "sticky mouse".  The queue would hang
after we got a mousedown, but before we got a mouseup.  Therefore, the mouse
was stuck in a "down" state (holding down a button or a menubar or whatever).
We learned how to poke the VIA to wake up and start working again.
     All these problems seem to have been fixed in 6.0.3.  But since most
programs don't use the Time Manager as much as LabVIEW does, you're probably
safe with earlier versions of the System.

Brian H. Powell					National Instruments Corp.
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