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From: awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How do we change the scheduler? (Was Re: Multitasking at ho
Message-ID: <42560@ut-emx.uucp>
Date: 15 Jan 91 16:54:49 GMT
References: <42459@ut-emx.uucp> <37975@cup.portal.com> <42516@ut-emx.uucp> <1449@umvlsi.ecs.umass.edu>
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Reply-To: awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin
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In article <1449@umvlsi.ecs.umass.edu> pswanson@umvlsi.ecs.umass.edu (Paul Swanson) writes:

>As a matter of fact they are load order dependent.  Some applications

No, they are not.  They are quit order dependent because of fragmentation, but
excepting an older version of Excel, they aren't load order dependent.

>adjust when there isn't as much memory available as they want and some

This is a different issue.  Some applications will run under memory conditions
of less memory available than the programmer decided was "recommended".

>do not.  Therefore I have to launch the apps which cannot adjust first
>so I can be sure to get all the apps running that I want.  (In this
>particular case it is Excel, Mathwriter and Word.  Word and Excel will
>use less space if there is not enough available but Mathwriter just
>won't launch if it is last.  That seems kind of load order dependent to
>me).

It seems load order dependent because Excel and Word probably need less memory
than Microsloth decided they should have.  MathWriter may _really_ need that
memory.  (As an aside, it probably isn't a good idea to run programs at under
their recommended memory size unless you know you're going to be working with
small files.)

>>
>>For example, on a 2 meg Mac, the OS takes up about 250k, the Finder takes up
>>160k, Word wants 512, and Excel wants a meg.  (These are all the current 
>       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>What version of Word is this?  The Word on the MAC right behind me is
>668K and asks for 1Meg when it starts up.

This is Word 4.0 I am talking about.  Do a Get Info on the Word application icon
and look at the Suggested Memory Size number.  It should be 512.  Somebody 
upped the value for Application Memory Size on your copy, I think.

>I hope you have a better background printer than the one supplied by
>Apple.  When something is printing in the background I have found that
>even scrolling thru text is painful.

I'm opening myself up for a cheap shot here, but you can be sure that most
utilities provided by Apple aren't as good as third party alternatives (almost
by definition).  Print Monitor is a CPU hog, as is the Finder.  You can get
replacements for both.

>I'm sure that Allen can tell me that if I do this, that, or the other
>thing on the MAC that Multifinder works great.  But that only proves
>that there is a difference between MAC tasking and multi-tasking because
>on the Amiga multi-tasking always works well.

Tell me, are there default time slices for programs on the Amiga?  Are you 
telling me that all Amiga users run their machines stock?  Nobody uses
PD/shareware/commercial enhancements?  No custom setups?  If so, I'm impressed,
but saddened.  I'd hoped to play with things (I like tweaking.)