Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Communications Toolbox questions Message-ID: <9222@hoptoad.uucp> Date: 8 Dec 89 09:30:56 GMT References: <9125@hoptoad.uucp> <36869@apple.Apple.COM> <9194@hoptoad.uucp> <37030@apple.Apple.COM> Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco Lines: 50 In article <37030@apple.Apple.COM> austing@Apple.COM (Glenn L. Austin) writes: >On 1MB machines, the overhead is something like 440 bytes (right Byron?) from >the System heap. Almost all of the rest of the overhead comes from the >Application heap, and only when the toolbox is used. Why remove an integral >part of System Software that uses so little memory? The documentation is a little strange on this point; it discusses running HyperCard under MultiFinder on a 1 megabyte system. I thought 2 megabytes was considered the minimum RAM for using MultiFinder at all these days, so I read this simply as "you may be unable to run HyperCard on a 1 Meg machine with the Toolbox installed". What's the real story? Is the RAM overhead really this small on a 1 Meg machine running Finder? And why does the documentation refer to highly improbable configurations? In any case, RAM is not the only problem with putting it in the System file. System files are already too big; fetching resources from them can take seconds under some common circumstances, like having a lot of fonts installed. I think we've all seen DAs like Chooser (no Appletalk) and Control Panel take forever to come up, and these are only the most visible occurrences. Standard File seems to have the same problem, and in fact anything that uses system resources is susceptible, i.e., everything. And of course, the larger the system file, the slower Font/DA Mover will run. There's also more RAM overhead than you're taking into account. Remember the overhead in the system file resource map. And time@oxtrap has an excellent point about the ease of deinstallation and reinstallation. >We worked >with both the INIT and installed versions, and believe me, the installed >version is *MUCH* better (we went through a few revs of the INIT version that >had problems running under MultiFinder, because of the Resource Manager and the >sharing of the resources in the CTB). However, by putting the code in the >System file, we free up a FCB, speed up the toolbox (how's 15500 cps throughput >on a 19.2K line during an XMODEM transfer!), and provide the best quality >possible! Aren't you already playing some cute games to let the tool resource maps be shared between applications under MultiFinder? Why should it be any harder, or any slower, to do the same with the main Comm. Toolbox resource file? If you weren't already doing these things, I'd say you had a point; but once you take the plunge, I don't see how an inch or two more is going to hurt. -- Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com "Please help support the moratorium on meaningless quotes in .signatures." -- Doug Asherman on rec.music.cd