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From: grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: poolfix3, poolfix4; naming conventions.
Message-ID: <2586@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Date: 8 May 90 11:22:30 GMT
References: <2709@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Organization: SPRU, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Lines: 42

From article <2709@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>, by csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod ):
> 
> to verify that it works properly. I've sent POOLF_CB to ATARI Germany
> hoping that it might find it's way to you. I didn't wait for your
> approval, true, and I regret this, but I had my reasons

I think that one lesson we should all learn from this and from stories
people have told about variations in Developers Kit policy, TOS 1.4
distribution, etc. is: NEVER assume that one bit of Atari will tell any
other bit anything at all.  Atari just isn't that organised.  I
sometimes wonder how the company keeps going at all.

> Some of those hackers mentioned above saved so much code that it became
> possible to include a new Macish DESKTOP, new window features, a complete
> hard disk driver, and, last but not least, GDOS. Needless to say that
> they also squeezed TOS 1.6 into 192 KB ROMs. Don't panic, since ATARI
> doesn't seem to want outside improvements for TOS, they won't spread
> it. Some of them, however, have written long and detailled letters to
> ATARI about ways of optimizing TOS, and apparently there has been no
> reaction. (The bug patched by POOLFIX, for example, has been known
> here since the 8-8-88 beta version of TOS 1.4, and it has been
> reported to ATARI before the end of the beta test phase.)

Again, if you're not writing directly to the people who maintain TOS,
forget it.  Descriptions like these, though, serve as a reminder of just
how much of the ST's potential has been wasted.  Getting the original ST
out so fast in 1985 was a terrific achievement, but the follow-through
has been a real disppointment.

Claus Brod has made some good points in a very reasonable way.  If his
pool fixing program does what he says it does, and doesn't hurt anything
else, then I can see no reason why it should not be distributed.  Why
not let Allan Pratt add his comments (and maybe even POOLFIX3) and let
users decide which version they want to use?

Graham

-- 
Graham Thomas, SPRU, Mantell Building, U of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK
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