Xref: utzoo comp.sys.atari.st:6528 comp.sys.amiga:11951
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!aero!foy
From: foy@aero.ARPA (Richard Foy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Multi-tasking? A nightmare...
Message-ID: <21860@aero.ARPA>
Date: 21 Dec 87 20:48:09 GMT
References: <2027@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk>
Reply-To: foy@aero.UUCP (Richard Foy)
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
Lines: 68

In article <2027@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk> pes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Smee) writes:
>
>Time for a bit of heresy, I thought.  I'm well aware of what multi-tasking
>does and doesn't do for you.  I use it all the time on the mini's and
>mainframes at work.  Nice.
>
>But, I question its usefulness (and even desireability) on typical 'home
>computers' in a 'home' environment -- and let's face it, that's where most
>of the Amigas and Ataris sold end up.  What I am questioning is TRUE
>multi-tasking.  I've got no argument with 'carousels' of suspended programs,

The TRUE benefit of TRUE multitasking in the home enviorment is made up of
a large number of trivial advantages. I believe that I am much more like
the average home user that the average participant of this net. So a 
few trivial examples.

I am writing a letter using my favorite editor. I want to refer to something
that I wrote some time ago. I don't remember when I wrote it, if it was in
a letter or something else. I don't remember much about the context. In 
other words somewhere in perhaps half a dozen 3.5in floppies is something
I would like to copy into the letter I am currently writing. What do I
do?

I take one of the half dozen disks, which I think may contain what I want
to copy, stick in my my second drive, open a new window by using the
pull down menu on my editor, start a search for some word that I might
have used in the prior document, direct the search output to ram, click
my editor to the front, and continue with my writing while the search
process runs in the background. When the drive quits running I click 
its window to the front, print the search output to the screen. When I
see a line that looks like it might be in the file I am looking for,
I can open a new window and scroll through the file to check if it is
what I want. If it is, I can open a new editor, clip the text that I want,
click to my letter and paste the text in. Describing this process took
far longer that doing it. But most important my train of thought doesn/t
get interrupted while I search for the filed inormation.

Without multitasking I would either try to recreate the old text, change
my letter so I wouldn't need the data from teh hidden file, or spend a
lot of MY time looking for the file. This whole process takes but a few
seconds of MY time and lets the COMPUTER spend a lot of its time between
my key strokes finding my data.

The advantage of TRUE multitasking is that I can decide to have the 
computer do ANYTHING that I have any softwhere for, while I do something
completly different.

Another example suppose I am a real estate salesperson. I have a data
base of properties available, I have some information about some 
prospective clients. I can do the same sort of search for properties
while I am reading the information about the prospective clients.

Suppose I am composing a song, I want a phrase from a song filed somewhere
on a disk, I sequence through stored songs on the left spesker while I
continue with the composing. 

I want to describe how a game works while I am sending a message to a BBS.
I start up the game, without shutting down my connection to the BBS..

I am doing A...I need the results of Z... to add to A... 

A can be anything that my machine can do. Z can be any thing my machine
can do including another A or any combination of 2 ,3 ,4 ...n, process from
A....Z.

Richard Foy

The opinions expressed are mine alone.