Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uoft02.utoledo.edu!desire!cse0507 From: cse0507@desire.wright.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Amiga Bashers Message-ID: <1266.26fbd120@desire.wright.edu> Date: 23 Sep 90 02:01:20 GMT References: <9009200536.AA27514@apple.com> <15362@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <1990Sep21.225236.26561@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <5588@mace.cc.purdue.edu> Lines: 36 > Where is > the Apple II system that can call up a Unix system and have a > transparent mount to the filesystem, as if it was just another drive? > Or where are the Apple II programmers working on networking? TCP/IP? I > know folks who are working on this for the Amiga. Or how about having > multiple windows with different resolutions? I'm to understand you can > pull up text windows, and different resolutions windows on the screen at > the same time (major Amiga hacker was telling me). Unfortunatly since Apple doesn't support the II line, you can only do such things with a Mac. Apple has had for some time a package called A/UX whch supplies a transparent interface to Unix based systems as well as X-Window support. Will this ever appear on the GS, I doubt it. What do you mean by different resolutions in different windows? The hardware controlling the screen normally prevents having more than one resolution active at a time. This is probably some hack to get around it, but that seems to happen a lot on the Amiga. I guess you could simulate it by going into a higher resolution mode and then make fat pixels when displaying a lower resolution graphic in a certain window. All then that would be needed is a way to produce the usually grater color palette of a low resolution graphic in a higher resolution mode. As far as multi-tasking, I really am not sure if the GS does or not. We do have the ability to multiprocess with the standard desk accessories, and some programs take advantage of this ability internaly. I debated with a friend of mine over multitasking before and we basicly came to the conclusion that it just depended on your definition. For example Appleworks GS will allow me to Download in the background while doing wordprocessing, pagelayout, illustration, or spreadsheet calculations since they are all in the same package. On top of this I could have many DAs up and running performing various tasks such as showing my processor loading, memory usage etc. Somewhere in the system software is a task manager which passes out time slices from the processor to all the different things running. Because it is not straightforward like the '&' in Unix, I would guess that it's hard to say if a GS is truly multitasking or not. Apparently the Mac which deos have Multifinder to do multitasking does not have this Taskmanager and Mac programers have to do the same thing from scratch.