Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!umd5!purdue!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!oster
From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Philosophical programming question: handles
Keywords: handles, PARC
Message-ID: <22965@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 13 Feb 88 10:03:26 GMT
References: <245@eagle_snax.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 16

In article <245@eagle_snax.UUCP> gpollice@eagle_snax.UUCP ( Sun ECD Software) writes:
>Actually, the concept of handles came from Xerox PARC many years ago.

Long, long before PARC ever existed, back in the '50s, Burroughs (now
Unisys) used this technique, like the Mac does, to manage all of memory.
Only, instead of a "master pointer" they called the same thing a "mother
descriptor". Their multi-tasking system allocated everybody's segments out
of the same heap. I've been wondering why multi-finder gives each
application its own heap instead of letting them all compete for pieces of
a single heap. Probably because more bad old applications would not have 
run.


--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
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