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From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Preemption good, time-slicing bad (was Re: All about sys 7.0 <long>)
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.144318.4117@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 2 Apr 91 14:43:18 GMT
References: <1CE00001.bmpkbkz@tbomb.ice.com> <10227@hub.ucsb.edu> <1991Apr1.232302.6882@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1991Apr1.232302.6882@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> tagreen@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Todd A. Green) writes:
>Thus if I check for context switching (via app4 event right?) and see
>that I've been switched out to the background I can be a "nice"
>programmer and change my sleep parameter to give up say 10 ticks

What if the service you're performing is vital to the user, and it wants you
to have as much cpu as you need, background or not?  What if NOTHING at all
is going on in the foreground, except the user twiddling its thumbs, waiting
for you to finish, (and staring at inane news articles :-))?  Why make it
wait longer than it must?

A priority system of some sort would be a help.  How much difference it
would make to most users is very doubtful; most users don't do much multi-
tasking anyway, or so I think.

(On to Moscow!)
--
Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu  UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner