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From: lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac,net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Easy of programming, Mac, Amiga
Message-ID: <172@apple.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 12:48:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: apple.172
Posted: Fri Sep 19 12:48:39 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Sep-86 21:21:20 EDT
References: <1274@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <741@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Reply-To: lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein)
Organization: Advanced Development Group, Apple Computer
Lines: 63
Xref: mnetor net.micro.mac:7126 net.micro.amiga:4767

In article <741@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) wri
es:
>The Amiga has a Font Editor and an Icon editor shipped with it (the Font
>Editor is officially new for release 1.2).  I've got a public domain
>Menu editor which lets me define menus, graphically, then produce C code to
>create them.  And a full featured gadget editor is just around the corner
>(can you edit MAC gadgets as easily as all the other stuff?).
 
For the most part, yes.  The Resource Editor has graphical icon, font, and
dialog editors.  Plus you can write custom graphical editors and plug them
into the Resource Editor.  There are also public domain editors for menus,
etc.
 
A significant point about these editors and resources in general is that
resources can be plugged into an application or document without
recompiling.  You can plug new editors into the Resource Editor framework
and start editing new kinds of data structures.  You can change the command
key equivalents for menus.  You can change the keyboard mapping in
MacTerminal.
 
>...
>FALSE, LIES, UNTRUE!  For each different style of printer, there is a 
>configuration file, run by the printer device, that translates all printer
>specific functions into generic Amiga functions.  This is more powerful 
>that the MAC's printer interface.  The Amiga can support any printer via
>any I/O port in a program transparent fashion.  This includes graphic 
>dumps (which may be scaled in various ways) as well as a generic text
>interface that the MAC doesn't have.  I can switch from Epson printer to
>HP Laserjet or Apple ImageWriter just by selecting the printer option
>through the Amiga's Preferences program.  How many type of printers will
>the MAC support, anyway (other than Apple, of course).

This was one of the mistakes in the original BYTE article.  The Macintosh
Print Manager supports printers in a device independent way, via printer
resource files.  You can also stream text and bitmaps to printers.  Is is
true that Apple itself does not support anything other than its own
printers, but 3rd parties have developed alternate printer drivers for the
Mac and Apple does license the source code of the ImageWriter driver to
developers.
 
>...
>The Amiga's disk interface is far faster than the MAC's.
>...
>With
>a few minor exceptions (circle/ellipse drawing, I believe), BYTE found the
>Amiga to be consistantly faster than the MAC, in graphics, disk, sound, etc.
 
I think if you go back a couple of months in BYTE you will find Bruce
Webster's column comparing the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST in a few informal
benchmarks.  I seem to recall that the Macintosh disks were faster than
either the Amiga's or Atari's and that the Amiga graphics were faster for
things that could be done in hardware (lines or rectangles) but that other
things (such as text) were slower.

-- 
Larry Rosenstein

Object Specialist
Apple Computer

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