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From: janhen@wn2.sci.kun.nl (Jan Hendrikx)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: An Intuition.device?
Message-ID: <2148@wn1.sci.kun.nl>
Date: 12 Sep 90 13:23:42 GMT
References: <30021@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <14358@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Sender: root@sci.kun.nl
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Lines: 30

In article <14358@cbmvax.commodore.com> peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) writes:
>In article <30021@nigel.ee.udel.edu> BARRETT@owl.ecil.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) writes:
>>   In some of his speeches, RJ Mical has told about how it was the intention
>>of the original Amiga OS developers to make Intuition a device instead of
>>a collection of routines (as it is now).  Had Intuition been made a 
>>device, software development would have been a hundred times easier,
>>because thing like opening screens and windows, creating menu items, and
>>receiving mouse input from the user would be done by passing codes to
>>the Intuition device and receiving information from it.  
>
>I don't see how calling a device is easier than calling a library.  There
>are many other issues too, even if it were a good idea.  How much slower
>would it run, if at all?  How much more ROM space and programmer effort
>would it take?  Would we rather spend that ROM space and programmer time
>somewhere else?  (I keep hearing many suggestions for enhancements, and
>I can only assume that most folks would like to see effort go "somewhere else")

(but many people said essentially the same thing)

I happen to remember having read essentially the same thing as MB has.
The reason _I_ remember a device would have been easier to program
_for RJ Mical_, who initially wrote the thing, was there would be far
less synchronisation problems. There seemed to be a lot of those,
at least until 1.2. If Intuition were a device with associated task,
this task could easily serialize operations that would interfere if
executed interleaved. At least that is what I understood.

--
Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert                           via janhen@sci.kun.nl
How can you be so stupid if you're identical to me? -Robert Silverberg