Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!glacier!elliott
From: elliott@glacier.steinmetz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: ProDOS
Message-ID: <11235@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 14 Jun 88 14:12:14 GMT
References: <1757@bucsb.UUCP>
Sender: news@steinmetz.ge.com
Reply-To: elliott@glacier.steinmetz.ge.com (Jim Elliott)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 50

I just thought I'd add my two cents worth into the discussion about
the relative merits of DOS 3.3 and ProDOS.

I remember that when I first saw ProDOS I was not terribly impressed.
But that was because I did not understand what it was.

I think calling ProDOS an "operating system" is a little bit
misleading, because that to me implies things like a command shell and
utilities (as one of this group's readers so ardently pointed out).
But then, that is not what ProDOS claims to be (otherwise it would be
called ProOS!) A better thing to call it would be a "file system". It
provides an interface to hardware devices on which you want to store
files. And THIS is what it is extremely good at.

It is almost unfortunate that Apple shipped BASIC.SYSTEM at all, for
it does not even begin to take advantage of the power of the ProDOS
Machine Language Interface. And, unfortunately, a lot of people think
that BASIC.SYSTEM >IS< ProDOS.

It was when I bought a copy of the ProDOS technical reference manual,
and sat down to see how I would go about writing programs to use
ProDOS that I began to see what it was really all about. And I became
very excited. It was better than Christmas! Anyone who has ever
written machine language programs that call RWTS (or, gak, the file
manager) in DOS 3.3 knows how much they left to be desired. The ProDOS
MLI is wonderful, and not just by comparison. For the environment in
which it exists, it is a beautiful and elegant construct. It has
helped me start thinking about my //e in new and productive ways, and
some of the results of this will be evident soon when I post ATP, my
rather extensive terminal emulation package, to comp.binaries.apple2

Meanwhile, evidence of the power of the ProDOS programming environment
has been showing up all over. The command shells mentioned already by
others are good examples of ways that power can be made accessible to
users. With ProDOS and Davex I can now do things that I did not really
think were practical on a //. And, impressively, they fit together
into a consistent, cohesive, and elegant frame. ProDOS seems to
encourage "well-behaved" programs. I almost never have to reboot
anymore.

Of course, If I really want to, I can use a DOS 3.3 program. I rarely
do, though. (And, it wouldn't know about my hard drive...)

 .     .    .    .   .  . ... .  .   .    .    .     .    .   .   .  . ... . .

 Jim Elliott                       /    ...!seismo!uunet!steinmetz!crd!elliott
                                  /
 "Don't look, son, it's          /      Jim_Elliott%mts@itsgw.rpi.edu [school]
  a secular humanist!"          /  (or)     elliott@ge-crd.arpa	      [work]
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