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From: woody@tybalt.caltech.edu (William Edward Woody)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: The Lawsuit, Standardization, and Whiny DOS Users...
Message-ID: <6312@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: 29 Apr 88 17:48:54 GMT
References: <8685@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> <5823@well.UUCP> <10600@steinmetz.ge.com> <5836@well.UUCP>
Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu
Reply-To: woody@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (William Edward Woody)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 37

>Unfortunately, many of Apple's "guidelines" are stated post-hoc,
>after developers have already written their applications
>differently. Were I an Apple developer, I would not be pleased
>that Apple has broken my software.

AAAAAAH!!!!!!  NO NO NO NO NO NO!
I Hate this when people (ESPECIALLY APPLE DEVELOPERS) say--and Believe--
this sort of drivel.

The Apple guidelines were stated a long time ago and ARE NOT post-hoc.
I Am an Apple developer, and I can say for a fact that if you followed
the rules as stated in the original two volume set that Apple released
way back when the Mac first came out, and if the compiler developer
followed the rules that they were supposed to follow as according to
the Developers bible (Inside Macintosh, either the original two-volume
set, the phone book edition, or the [now five volume set]), YOUR
SOFTWARE WOULD STILL WORK!

Remember the HFS fiasco?  People who were converting the vRefNum to
a volume name, and screaming at Apple that this didn't work?  How 'bout
those people who assumed that the screen would be a fixed size, and
wonders why their software didn't work when Apple recommended that
you get the Window Manager's grafPort size?
Please don't say that Apple's rules are ad-hoc; they're not.  It's
just that many (most?) programmers believe that they can out-guess the
operating system?  (I know one guy who implemented the entire set
of WindowManager routines because he didn't want to learn the WindowManger
stuff himself, and he wonders why it doesn't work with Multifinder...)

ARG!

Hey, at least all of my software still works; even the stuff that
I wrote in 1984!  (And it all works well on my MacII!)

  -  William Edward Woody
     woody@tybalt.caltech.edu                   (Mac>][n&&/|\)&&(MacII>AT)
Disclamer:  I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm talking about...