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From: webber@athos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber)
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Call for votes: comp.binaries.hypercard
Message-ID: <1055@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 29 Feb 88 05:27:25 GMT
References: <454@stech.UUCP> <960@athos.rutgers.edu> <42857@sun.uucp> <1866@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 50

In article <1866@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, svpillay@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kanthan Pillay) writes:
> ...
> Usenet based on Unix? How do you figure this? The majority of users who
> access Usenet here at Princeton use an IBM3081 mainframe. A unique case,
> you say? Nope. The driver that we use here for Usenet is also used at
> many other IBM sites around this country. Try telling all of those users
> that they should be using a Unix machine and you'ld be asking for
> trouble. Try telling them that Usenet is _reserved_ for Unix machines,
> and then you would _really_ be in hot water. 

They should be using Unix machines (really).  But no, Usenet isn't RESERVED
for UNIX machines.  But it was started on them and ran for the most
part exclusively on them for some time now.  Non-unix machines can hardly
be viewed as other than guests on the net.

> Own good has nothing to do with it. I can appreciate Bill Atkinson
> sitting tight with the source code for HyperCard. It's a bit difficult
> translating this to Unix terms. Simply, you need to be a Mac user to
> understand.

I am not asking for the source to HyperCard, just disclosure of stack formats.

> The C source code posted to comp.sources.unix is useless to the majority
> of users here at Princeton. I don't hear them complaining.

Why, can't they read a C manual?  One of the first C compilers was for
IBM machines - did they later give up on them as a lost cause?  Translating
C to Cobol or PL/1 or Fortran is no problem for anyone who is so inclined.
All the necessary information to do it is very easy to come by.

> >to implement standard functionalities in a particularly restrictive
> >environment. 
> Restrictive by your standards. I can pick up my Mac and tote it around
> the world, as can all those Mac users out there. You want to tote around
> your workstation? And my Mac gives me complete access to the Unix
> environment.

I can tote around my Psion Organizer too, so what.  The environment on
a Mac is more restrictive than it was on a PDP-11/45 running unix (it has
little to do with hardware and alot to do with who the people who packaged
it decided they wanted to target).

> What does that have to do with Mac users? Surely it should be the
> responsibility of the (I assume) Unix users ... sorry, knowledgeable
> users, to take the trouble of downloading such files to his/her Mac,

Hmmm.  How do you feel about having Macs used as machines to port around
Sun4 binaries?  Of course, any Mac user who wanted could just download them
to their Sun4 (prices getting closer and closer...).

----- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)