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From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: GEMDOS memory allocation
Message-ID: <787@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 14:00:35 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.787
Posted: Fri Jan 23 14:00:35 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 19:36:37 EST
References: <8701190836.AA05609@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <525@atari.UUCP> <186@ames.UUCP>
Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science
Lines: 31

In article <186@ames.UUCP> fouts@orville.UUCP (Marty Fouts) writes, in response
to remarks by Allan Pratt of Atari:

>Get Real Alan.

I'm not sure how real he has to get. Obviously Atari has vested interests
in keeping undocumented features undocumented; this lets them change them
later. Given the generally low quality of the DRI software in the ST, they
have good reasons for wanting to change much of it.

However, I as a consumer, have just as good reasons for wanting programs
not to depend upon undocumented features. If those features are changed, 
then suddenly programs don't work. Ask anybody in the IBM PC world about
the disadvantages of bypassing the BIOS in order to make the program run 
faster. 

Backward and forward compatibility are essential if the ST is to continue
to flower. There's an enormous amount of PD software available for the
machine, and some of it is really good. If programs start malfunctioning
(say by accidentally trashing a device control block that now lives where
some Malloc parameters used to live), people will stop using (and therefore
stop writing) PD software.

If programmers start depending upon undocumented features, they will force
Atari to support those features. Is that more important than having them 
rewrite GEMDOS so it works? What I want is for Atari to fix bugs, even at 
the cost of changing data structures. Allan (and Landon and Neil) have
offered to give good workarounds if we can formulate the bug reports
properly. Let's take them up on it.