Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!rex!ukma!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!davewt
From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Multitasking.
Message-ID: <1991Jan24.155505.2130@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 24 Jan 91 15:55:05 GMT
References: <12913@life.ai.mit.edu> <12916@life.ai.mit.edu> <11834@goofy.Apple.COM>
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources (ncoast)
Lines: 34

In article <11834@goofy.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.com (Larry Rosenstein) writes:
>You definitely have to insert extra calls, but it isn't as hard as you
>make it out to be.  There are 2 approaches you can take:
	It isn't a matter of being HARD, it's a matter of EFFICIENCY. By
inserting extra calls you:
	a) Make every program that behaves bigger
	b) Waste part of the programs time slice to do something that the OS
		should be doing for it in the first place.
>I've used each of these techniques to port vanilla C programs to the Mac
>and get them to run in the background.
	Gee, and all I have to do is compile them.
>And Mac users do exactly the same things.  I put compiles in the background
>all the time, and I suspect that most if not all rendering programs also
>work in the background.
	Of course they work, but they all run at the same priority. If you
put a compile in the background, your foreground task is going to slow
down, whether you want it to or not.
>The foreground task sometimes pauses (primarily during I/O) but mostly
>everything runs smoothly.
	What happens if you try to do a download at 9600 baud on a heavily
loaded system? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to set the download task
at a higher priority?
>This is true of CPU-bound programs.  Programs that are user-input-bound
>are not CPU hogs under MultiFinder.
	And neither are they on the Amiga. But on the Amiga even CPU-bound
programs won't be CPU hogs unless you intentionally want them to be.
>These things exists in the internals of MultiFinder, but they up to now they
>have not been exported to programmers.  This is changed in System 7.
	Ah, so you are JUST NOW releasing info that programmer should have
had all along. And I suppose you expect programmers to drop their old
techniques overnight and start using the "correct" ones?


			Dave