Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Communications Toolbox questions
Message-ID: <9194@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 5 Dec 89 07:41:27 GMT
References: <9125@hoptoad.uucp> <36869@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 30

In article <36869@apple.Apple.COM> kazim@Apple.COM (Alex Kazim) writes:
>>(2)  Are you going to make the installation process less painful for
>>users who have 6.0.x?  This is pretty important for marketing reasons.
>
>Uh, no.  We'll be using an Installer 3.0 script for the 6.0.x systems 
>to install the toolbox into the System file.  The reason is that we have
>to run before inits that register themselves with the Comm Resource Mgr.

OK, this has been preying on my mind for a few hours and I have what
seems to be a good answer.  INITs that install Comm Toolbox resources
in the linked list should not be given type INIT or RDEV to be picked
up by the INIT 31 mechanism.  Instead, they should be give a new type,
say 'Comm', that INIT 31 won't pick up.  Then the toolbox file, which
*is* of type INIT or RDEV, contains its own INIT-31-type resource that
only picks up files of the new type.  Running INITs is pretty easy; the
real INIT 31 resource is only 474 bytes of code.

I think the advantages of not installing the Toolbox in the already
badly overloaded System resource file speak for themselves, though I
will be glad to enumerate them if necessary.  I don't see any serious
problems with this approach; it seems like a simple technical solution
to a serious user interface issue.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"The Diabolonian position is new to the London playgoer of today, but not to
 lovers of serious literature.  From Prometheus to the Wagnerian Siegfried,
 some enemy of the gods, unterrified champion of those oppressed by them, has
 always towered among the heroes of the loftiest poetry."
    - Shaw, "On Diabolonian Ethics"