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From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.wanted,comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Looking for SWITCHER...
Keywords: SWITCHER old mac
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.162441.26851@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 28 Jun 91 16:24:41 GMT
References: <1991Jun28.050137.22383@calvin.ee.cornell.edu>
Sender: news@neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Stanford University
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In article <1991Jun28.050137.22383@calvin.ee.cornell.edu>, jose@calvin.ee.cornell.edu (Jose M. Rosado-Roman) writes:
|> OK, so I have this friend with a really old mac (128K)!  And he has
|> asked me to post a request for him...
|> 
|> Do any of you out there know where I can get a copy of a really old
|> application called SWITCHER??  It is supposed to be a pre-multifinder
|> application that did what the multifinder does now...
|> He is looking for it because he likes the way it used to 'shuffle' from
|> application to application.  He had a copy on a 400k floppy but the
|> floppy gave out on him...
|> 
|> Having heard this from him, I have gotten interested in the 'shuffling'
|> part of it and am wondering if there is anyway to do this with Sys7.0??
|> I think it would be neat to see the 'shuffling' of application windows...
To my recollection, Switcher needed 512K or more - are you sure the
machine has only 128K?

The "shuffling" could either be instantaneous, or you could get
an animated effect, where the screen slid sideways as the other
application's screen moved onto the screen. If you had enough memory,
each switched out application remembered its whole screen, which
avoided the updates necessary with multifinder when an application
moves to the front.

Multifinder, with all applications visible at the same time,
was touted as an improvement (mostly, it was; I wonder how many
people remember or know which multifinder features were originally
introduced as clever hacks to make Switcher work). Still, it seems
something was lost in the process. It would be an improvement if
the System 7 hide feature, instead of just making the windows of
an application invisible, moved them offscreen if memory was
available.

Kind of ironic that this should come up at the same time as the thread
about how great the Amiga multiple screen feature is.
-- 
Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu