Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ANDREW.CMU.EDU!jm7e+ From: jm7e+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU ("Jeremy G. Mereness") Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Prodos 16 Environments Message-ID: Date: 19 Jan 88 16:20:29 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 42 Thanks all for the info. I am afraid to say, however, that most or all of the alternative environments you mentioned are either expensive, hard to find, or (most often) both. I guess I am just wishing for the good ol' days when a fully functional and customizable OS came with the machine. Although Prodos 8 is good and faithful, Finder is the only thing you can work with in 16 bit mode when you put the thing together out of the box. At this point in my life, ADPA is a big investment. ECP16 from Don Elton sounds reasonable, but I would like some specs. and Whatever happened with Kyan's Kix-GS? [By the way. I just got a copy of Gary Little's "Apple Prodos: Advanced Featured for Programmers." As this was written during the days of 1.1.1, how out of date is the book in regards to Prodos 8?] My other purpose in writing "P16E" was whether anybody cared about the idea of a preferences file. The system used here at CMU as well as at MIT (Athena) and maybe Berkeley makes extensive use of a text-based preferences file from which applications can find specs on what little things the user would like to see changed, such as default values, files to be executed, macros, and even a background raster image. In a setting where a computer is shared, control panel access would be nice, instead of each user having to reset it to his tastes by hand (Macs have this problem). The GS has the potential (if it ever gets some speed...) to be a truly great machine, especially if someone carries out the threat of porting a UNIX clone, but it needs some standards that support such capabilities. I just don't think that the Finder shell can cut it, as it cannot be programmed. I expect there should be another, faster, SMALLER version of Prodos 16 coming out eventually. When it does, it will become the standard along with any shell that is packaged with it. Whatever that is, I can only hope that it is more powerful than Finder. Capt. Albatross