Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!samsung!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Reordering GS/OS directories
Message-ID: <15021@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 30 Jan 91 20:30:14 GMT
References: <1991Jan29.113245.24252@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <15014@smoke.brl.mil> <1991Jan29.210436.3866@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 23

In article <1991Jan29.210436.3866@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar) writes:
>Is it too rough to have to boot off of floppy once or twice a month?

That's not the point.  Suppose as a programmer I come up with a nice,
safe disk compaction utility.  My customers might conceivably like to
run this utility fairly frequently.  What Apple has done is force me
to tell my customers, "Well, the utility works okay on every partition
on your hard disk EXECPT the one you booted from; reboot from the
special floppy whose construction is detailed in Appendix A."  That
makes me, not Apple, look like an incompetent in the eyes of my
customers.  Note that several existing commercial products "suddenly
stopped working" when customers upgraded to the Apple IIGS System Disk
release that added this restriction.

The essential issue is one of system software design.  It is obvious
to any competent systems programmer that systems programs are easier
to implement correctly, and that they work more "slickly", when the
fundamental OS features obey a simple model than when they follow a
"warty" model.  Warts make it necessary to invest more effort in the
design and implementation of applications while simultaneously
reducing their utility.  This is an issue that the Computing Techniques
research group at AT&T Bell Laboratories obvious understands very well;
it would behoove others to understand it also.