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Path: utzoo!utcsri!flaps
From: flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac vs. Amiga
Message-ID: <3986@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 09:05:23 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.3986
Posted: Fri Jan 23 09:05:23 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Jan-87 21:45:47 EST
References: <241@elxsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Toronto
Lines: 38
Summary: 


In article <241@elxsi.UUCP> fisher@elxsi.UUCP (Chuck Fisher) quotes from an
article in the January, 1987 issue of Dr.  Dobbs Journal of Software Tools,
"Macintosh Buttons and Amiga Gadgets" written by Jan L. Hamington:
...
>The Macintosh routines are also more complete in
>terms of their support for the documented user interface.
...
>It is true that the Amiga performs some
>functions "automatically" for which a Macintosh program must
>include code (for example, moving and sizing windows).

I find it necessary to point out that, like many other things on the mac,
windows are not completely implemented.  Just like multitasking, which is
not really implemented on the mac in the sense that a task always has to
voluntarily give up its control of the cpu (by calling SystemTask, I think it
is)*, with windows the mac doesn't store what's obscured when a window goes
on top of another window.  Therefore the user program must store this at all
times, because it is wiped out before the user program gets notified that the
window has been obscured.  Then the user program must redraw the contents of
the window that was obscured when the window is brought to front again.

Therefore I think it is a gross understatement to say that the Amiga merely
performs these functions automatically rather than the user program having
to do it itself.  The Amiga supports windows completely and the Mac does not.
On the Amiga, for example, you can draw into a backgrounded window, one of
the fundamental things you might want to do with a window.

ajr


* It's true that on the Amiga you can block task switching.  I don't know
how common this capability is in general, but this is not the same.  A
looping program on the mac blocks task switching, for example, and does
not on the Amiga.  Anyway, my favourite large-computer-that-must-be-kept-in-
an-air-conditioned-room was the dec10 running tops10, which also had this
capability to ignore task switching, and it ran hundreds of users at a time
& no one ever said it wasn't multitasking.