Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!ericsc
From: ericsc@microsoft.UUCP (Eric SCHLEGEL)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Why do application partitions exist?
Message-ID: <70599@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 91 18:26:08 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.182501.4325@wam.umd.edu> <1991Feb6.085236.15677@sol.UVic.CA> <39068@cup.portal.com> <91041.160007CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu>
Reply-To: ericsc@microsoft.UUCP (Eric SCHLEGEL)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 14

In article <91041.160007CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu (Christopher Tate) writes:
>*HOWEVER*, now that we've determined that having one heap shared by all
>applications is in fact feasible, the real question is "Why didn't Apple
>do it that way when they wrote MultiFinder."  I suspect it's because the
>application structure makes some pretty heavy demands on things like global
>variables, etc.  Remember that every application has to have its own A5
>world!

I don't know if this is still the case, but at one time, QuickDraw assumed
that it could use the space between the top of the application heap and
the stack as scratch space. Obviously this assumption breaks if we start
embedding stacks inside a global heap.

-eric