Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!mcnc!ncsuvx!news From: rnf@shumv1.uucp (Rick Fincher) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: AWGS 1.1 (long) Keywords: bat, photography, monk, seven Message-ID: <1989Dec6.072954.22907@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Date: 6 Dec 89 07:29:54 GMT References: <8912050042.AA15991@decwrl.dec.com> <1989Dec5.195806.13131@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Reply-To: rnf@shumv1.ncsu.edu (Rick Fincher) Organization: NCSU Computing Center Lines: 83 In article wombat@claris.com (Scott Lindsey) writes: >> included, as well as for AppleTalk in general, it is not multi-launch, though. > >Specifically, it is single-launch on a AppleShare file server. Originally, >marketing wanted me to make it 0-launch, but I was able to convince them >otherwise. Good going! That would have been a real pain for network users. Why would they want to make it 0-launch if only one user at a time could run it? Does Claris hold to the notion that software is licensed for a particular CPU? > >No, byte range locking is not done (does anyone know if this capability is >even available through GS/OS?) DB is a memory-based database... it loads the You can with the AppleShare FST. You have to make the AFP calls from the application to lock a range. The application has to keep track of which bytes in the file represent a record. This also requires disk based database files, or at least files that write modifications to the disk immediately. The application would have to send a message to other users of the file that the record was changed so that they could update their memory version of it. > >> Or maybe to conform with Claris' proposed file exchange standard? > >I assume you mean XTND? XTND has to do with providing a mechanism for reading >other file formats, whatever they may be, so there's no particular reason for >a file format change for compatibility here. > I was under the (mistaken) impression that it was some sort of meta format like IGES in the CAD world that everyone could write their own converters for. So would this be sort of like Apple File Exchange built into the program? Is AWGS eventually going to support it?! The thought of being able to use MacWrite, MacPaint, and FileMaker documents and vice-versa over a network is very appealing. > >> The new printer drivers help a lot. Personnaly, I find the improved draft >> mode performance to be the biggest help here. If you printed in draft mode > >The funny thing is that the opt/cmd key modification to the ImageWriter driver >was done at the last minute as a "hidden feature" because I thought it might >appease a few vocal users who wanted to use NLQ or Correspondence modes. Whoa! What is that? I've just been setting the front panel switch (though, now that I think of it, that would be impractical with a networked printer) is there a better way? Thanks a million Scott! Just knowing that you guys are there listening makes me feel good about buying and using your product. I've got a lot of confidence in AWGS and its future because of your responsiveness to customer input. I have a suggestion or two for future versions. One would be a Finder-like module. This would give the program all of the functionality of multiple programs running on a Mac under MultiFinder. Perhaps you could even get with Apple and actually use their Finder. This would take a lot of memory, but it's down to less than $100 a meg now. This in combination with the new 1 meg IIgs will allow new IIgs owners to to get 2 megs for less than it cost us to get the 512K extra that we needed to run lots of stuff last year. The other suggestion I would have is to give developers a means of adding their applications to the kernel of AWGS, similar to the way you do with AppleWorks. It would be great if we could pick and choose among many programs and add 1 or 2 modules from 3rd parties (or Claris). Also the Communications module would be far more useful if it had VT-100 capability. With that you could sell IIgs's as generalized Vax terminals. A monochrome system with one floppy and using a Vax as an AppleShare Server for hard disk storage, would cost less than $1300 with AWGS. That's cheaper than a Mac Plus without software, faster too, and you get a 12 inch screen! The local word processing et al would also offload the Vax, stretching its resources further. Documents could be transferred in the background, so very little productivity would be lost waiting for file transfers. Rick Fincher rnf@shumv1.ncsu.edu