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From: minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: What can't it do? (StuffIt in background???)
Message-ID: <1990Jul31.073432.14514@d.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 31 Jul 90 07:34:32 GMT
References: <2737@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Lines: 48



I write:
|   Have you really decoded a stuffit file and done something else t the
| time? I have found that StuffIt (1.5.1) is a cpu hog like nobody's
| business and pretty much locks up the machine. Is there something I
| missed?

ngg@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM (Norman Goodger):
| 	Stuffit has a preference setting for allowing it to work in 
| 	the background under MultiFinder, which really slows it down
| 	(for obvious reasons) If you do not have this setting turned
| 	on, Stuffit will become the CPU hog that you claim it to be.
 
  Actually, I _did_ have the checkbox set, but I found that StuffIt
would give enough ccles in a 100K file to, say, update two or three
windows in the finder. This, however, is on a 2048KE. Since then, I've
gotten an SE/30 which seems to handle the load much better, although I
still wasn't completely satisified.

| 	With all the discussion of Cooperative and pre-emptive multi-
| 	tasking, I may have missed it, but rarely is it mentioned
| 	that Cooperative multi-tasking appears on the surface to
| 	allow for much better performance than pre-emptive will allow.
| 	I suspect that if MultiFinder or future systems finally give
| 	us pre-emptive multi-tasking, performance is going to suffer
| 	right along with it, unless we have 50mhz+ CPU's for the 
| 	masses..

  Actually, with all the spoofing MultiFinder has to do, a well written
scheduler that heavily favors the foreground task would most likely do a
pretty good job at making MultiFinder look bad from a technical side,
although the difference would most likely be less than perceptible with
well written cooperative apps. Preemption is just one of those things
that can make a programmer's life easier and cleaner. More important for
the Mac, IMHO, is memory protection. Wouldn't it be nice to know when
some app steps out of bounds, potentially twiddling someone else's bits?
  Perhaps Apple will make some sweeping changes with System 8, but after
the delays we have seen for Sys 7 even though some features were dropped
(my most wanted being the new printing architecture), I don't think I'll
wait for it. :-) Maybe someday I'll be able to afford enough machine for
A/UX and get a good bit from both ends of the spectrum at once.

-- 
|_    /| | Robert Minich            |
|\'o.O'  | Oklahoma State University| There are no heroes --
|=(___)= | minich@a.cs.okstate.edu  |   We all wear gray hats.
|   U    | - Ackphtth               |