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From: lippin@spam.berkeley.edu (The Apathist)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Need info on multitasking capabilities on the mac
Message-ID: <1989Nov22.205758.21808@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 22 Nov 89 20:57:58 GMT
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Recently jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright) wrote:

>OK, I'm sitting here with a 4 megabyte file to download.  *PERFECT* use
>for multi-tasking.  Thank god for multifinder.  Fire it up, start the
>download.  All's going well.  Leave.  Time passes.  Return.  Let's see
>how things are going.  Switch over to another program.  Browse around.
>Open up a menu from menu bar.
[...]
>There's not much to do about this without a radical change to the Mac OS.

How about fixing MenuSelect (and other mouse following routines) to
call SystemTask?  That way, a terminal program, or anything else that
runs into a critical need for non-interrupt time every 20 seconds or
so can install a driver to get some.  (Using EventAvail or
WaitNextEvent won't work here, because they may not return for a
month, and so it becomes painful to use menus.  But SystemTask is
currently pretty fast.)

That's hardly a radical change to the OS; it is a bit more work for
the writers of downloading programs.

A better idea, IMHO, would be a separate manager for tasks which are
quick, can't happen at interrupt time, and need to be called
periodically.  This would avoid overloading the already schizophrenic
device manager, and so give a call that would return faster than
SystemTask.  It could also provide other services, such as a way to
warn the background tasks when a program is going to seize the
processor.

>Followup to alt.dev.null.

My, aren't we open minded today!

					--Tom Lippincott
					  lippin@math.berkeley.edu

		"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards,
		 for they are subtle and quick to anger."
					--J.R.R. Tolkien