Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!usc!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!midway!zaphod!francis From: francis@uchicago.edu (Francis Stracke) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: give me solid facts: why is the mac better than MeSsy DOS/WINDOWS Message-ID: Date: 28 Feb 91 22:13:51 GMT References: <91.056.16:01:18@ira.uka.de> <91057.162111CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu> <4161@gmdzi.gmd.de> Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) Organization: Mathematics Department, University of Chicago Lines: 37 In-Reply-To: strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de's message of 28 Feb 91 00:37:12 GMT In article <4161@gmdzi.gmd.de> strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes: CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu (Christopher Tate) writes: >Someone already mentioned this, but it needs to be said again (and again [...] >Since Day One, Macintoshes have been equipped with a mechanism built into the >firmware of the machine to allow applications ("programs," to you MS-DOS >people) to share information. This is the "Clipboard" concept, and its real >beauty is that it is designed to be *completely* application-independant. Is this really true? I.e. is the clipboard support really built into the firmware of the Macintosh? More or less. It's in the System File, usually, but it's always there. , for example. I don't know how the Macintosh handles multiple applications or multiple clipboard formats. There's one system-wide clipboard; apps are supposed to copy their private scraps (if any) onto it when they get switched to background. As for multiple formats: the data is stored as resources (i.e., with four-character type names), and the resource type indicates the format. Multiple resources can be on the scrap at once; the classic example is a word processor exporting both its text and the picture of that text. (Most don't, but you could.) -- /=============================================================================\ | Francis Stracke | My opinions are my own. I don't steal them.| | Department of Mathematics |=============================================| | University of Chicago | Until you stalk and overrun, | | francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu | you can't devour anyone. -- Hobbes | \=============================================================================/