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From: mboen@nixpbe.UUCP (Martin Boening)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Rebuttal time
Message-ID: <500@nixpbe.UUCP>
Date: 1 Sep 89 05:49:15 GMT
References: <8908252144.AA27005@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <123950@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: Nixdorf Computer AG, Paderborn, Germany
Lines: 37

cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes:

> ....
>The keys are that you have to have a _window based_ UI because single
>interface terminal UI's are generally not flexible enough for effective
>use of multitasking ....

Come again? I suppose most UNIX Systems then aren't really effective
doing multitasking, what with all those stupid single interface terminal
UI's called vt100 terminals.

The idea is: multitasking is nice but you don't need window-based UI's.
E.g. I start a make in the background, push whatever else comes to mind
(such as some net statistics programs, TeX runs, etc.,into the background
and then do some edditing in the foreground. For this, I don't necessarily
need a window-based UI.

Same goes for multitasking on personal computers (let's avoid saying PC
here, it's a much abused term :-)). It's nice to have a window_based UI
(such as on the Amiga, but also such as MS-Windows!), but it's no neces-
sity. This is especially true if all you do in the background is print
spooling, disk formatting and compiling. What else do you do in the
background? To have 10 editor sessions, you hardly need multitasking.
All you need is TASK SWITCHING, because there's no concurrent processing
involved. Ray tracing? Have it trace into a file which you can view later.
Who cares to see a ray trace image SLOOOWLY unfold in a separate window
while editing? Whoi can even look at that separate window between looking
at the edit window and the text he (she) is typing.

Just thought I'd add this to heat up the discussion.

Martin
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