Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Path: utzoo!lsuc!jmm
From: jmm@lsuc.on.ca (John Macdonald)
Subject: Re: ResEdit
Message-ID: <1990Nov10.065036.15110@lsuc.on.ca>
Organization: (guest of) Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
References: <85704@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 90 06:50:36 GMT

In article <85704@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <elk@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
>
>  I'm the person who originally posted complaining about Apple not
>letting people distribute ResEdit freely to each other.
>  I must admit that after listening to what some people had to say
>that there are good reasons to abide by the restrictions.
>
>  It does seem silly to restrict access to a free program, but it is
>neessary for Apple to do that to retain its copyright.

Except that the same argument applies to every release of the
system or Hypercard, and those are available just by taking a
blank disk into the closest dealer (for most people at least,
some dealers may be stingy) or by FTP from apple.com if you're
on the net.  No purchase from APDA required.  No commercial
Compuserve (or similar) required.  It's available and free.

ResEdit has sufficient nuisances built in to its distribution
that I've never had a copy that didn't crash fairly often.
Sure I've only had fifth hand copies that I wasn't supposed
to have been given, and I've never tried too hard to find out
what was the correct version for the system release I was
running and searching for that release - but I've never had
to go to that sort of length to get a working Font/DA mover
because Apple distributes it with the system.

Every time I see a description of a simple way of getting a
useful result using ResEdit, I get mildly annoyed at Apple
for not providing it to me as part of the normal system
release process.  The only justification that I have ever
seen for not doing so is that ResEdit does not fit with the
"anybody can operate a Mac easily" philosophy - ResEdit provides
too much facility for a user to badly confuse himself and his
system.  (Of course the garbage can provides sufficient
mechanism for messing a system up pretty badly, but there
are warning dialog boxes to alleviate that.)  A far as I am
concerned, I would really prefer that ResEdit be provided,
with a skull-and-cross-bones icon and a dialog box warning
that irreparable damage can occur from using this utility.