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From: dent@fergvax.unl.edu (Dave Caplinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: System 8 (What enhancements do people want?)
Message-ID: <2960@unocss.unomaha.edu>
Date: 3 May 90 01:14:11 GMT
References: <2129@zipeecs.umich.edu>
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Reply-To: dent@fergvax.unl.edu
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From article <2129@zipeecs.umich.edu>, by gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin):
> In article <67@victoria.cs.utexas.edu> s881@cs.utexas.edu (Dan Connolly) writes:
>>world, I'm never quite sure where my key-strokes go or whether a process
>>is done with my mouse-click. (Try using idraw under Unix. I'll take
>>MacDraw EVERY day).
> 
> Suppose you want to do a large ray trace?  I wouldn't want to sit around for
> several hours without being able to use my system for something else.
> With preemption, you just shove the process in the background at a low
> priority, and it gobbles up any CPU time that you do not use.  Generally, when
> you're doing something like word processing, there are tons of cycles to spare
> since you appear to be moving about as fast as granite to a computer.
> [...]
> How about:  Cooperative is fine for somethings, but just doesn't cut it for
> others.

I see what you're saying, but I think you gave the wrong reason.  (Didn't you
read The Macintosh Way? :-)

Macintosh (non-preemptive) multitasking lets you do exactly what you just said
you wanted preemption for: starting up a task (for example a large ray trace),
and shoving it in the background at a low priority while you do something else.
In fact, the get the "low priority" part for free because the "front"
application will get a "high priority" simply by the nature of cooperative
multitasking. :-)

> 				See ya, Ralph

-/ Dave Caplinger /---------------------------------------------------------
 President     --    University of Nebraska at Omaha Student Chapter of ACM
 dent@rsal.unomaha.edu         ...!uunet!unocss!dent          (BITNET? HA!)
-/ Dave Caplinger /---------------------------------------------------------
 Microcomputer Specialist,   Campus Computing,   Univ. of Nebraska at Omaha
 dent@zeus.unomaha.edu         ...!uunet!unocss!dent            DENT@UNOMA1