Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!att!linac!midway!gargoyle!chinet!laird
From: laird@chinet.chi.il.us (Laird J. Heal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: MPW 3 - why bother?
Message-ID: <1991Jan13.112728.13613@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 13 Jan 91 11:27:28 GMT
References: <47967@apple.Apple.COM> <1991Jan10.222325.2753@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 47

In article <47967@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes:
>In article <1991Jan10.222325.2753@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au> a_dent@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au writes:

[Note: there were alternative routines and header files posted to allow
one to call the Trap calls avoiding the "glue" routines which did the
string-conversions for us whether we wanted them or not; and there was a
way, albeit painful, to convince the Green Hills C compiler to generate
inline code for as many bytes as desired.  Both of these were available
since the days of the Lisa Workshop C compiler.

There was not anything like \p for strings, though.  Converting all of
the string-converting calls is a straightforward, mechanical, onerous
and non-trivial task;  I only did it once, in 1985 I think.]

>>So, why change?????
>>[...]
>>MPW 3 - JUST SAY "NO"

>There are many reasons for changing. Whether or not they are good is up
>to you.

>Internally, one of the biggest reasons for our coming out with a 3.0
>compiler was that we needed control. The previous C compilers were
>written by Green Hills, and we had no control over them. We didn't even
>have the source code. Whenever a bug was reported, we had no way of
>tracking it down or fixing it.

Well, it is good to know that Apple does not ask more as a customer than
it gives to its customers.  This is not a flame.  I would dearly love to
have a CD-ROM with all of that wonderful source code MacsBug only hints
at in the wee hours of the {AM,PM} whilst I wonder what that {OS,Toolbox}
routine really is doing.  How about it, a "Dark Side of the ROM" CD?

Seriously, we have heard about Macintalk and now Green Hills C.  It should
show that there are some times when source code is than just useful, almost
essential.  Food for thought.  Post any followups to misc.legal or
something like that.

Not seriously, let's light a little match for a second:  you live by the
sword, you die by the sword.

Ooops, the flame died out:  NAAH NAAH naah NAAH NAAH! (still not seriously)

>Keith Rollin  ---  Apple Computer, Inc.  ---  Developer Technical Support
-- 
Laird J. Heal                           The Usenet is dead!
Here:  laird@chinet.chi.il.us		Long Live the Usenet!