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From: edstrom@UNCAEDU.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: RE: environment passing
Message-ID: <871023192229.0o7@UcEdu.UNCA.AdhocNet.CA>
Date: Fri, 23-Oct-87 21:22:29 EST
Article-I.D.: UcEdu.871023192229.0o7
Posted: Fri Oct 23 21:22:29 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 22:41:59 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 23


About the proposal to pass environments via basepages: this is dangerous.
I would suggest that the "clipboard" accesory/subroutine suite be used. This
can be used for the purpose suggested but also has the advantages that:

A: it will survive system crash or program failure so that a long chain of
   realted programs will not have to be restarted at the beginning (information
   is read/written to memory and/or disk).

B: it is not half so esoteric as the methods that have been suggested. It can
   be used by relative novices through functionaly obvious subroutine calls
   like write_clip, read_clip or save_clip.

I have a version for Alcyonm Megamax and Lattice, if anyone is interested. An
added feature is that any type of data can be passed to child processes, i.e.
images & such and not just environment strings.

As I recall this was once proposed as a standard for inter-process communication
and was at first tentatively endorsed by Atari and then dropped.

Personaly, I think that this is a very practical solutin to this problem and
some others. As I recall jruley on bix first proposed it but I may be wrong on
this point.