Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!spl1!laidbak!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!nsc!voder!apple!rekieta
From: rekieta@Apple.COM (Paul Rekieta)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Anybody using MacWorkStation?
Message-ID: <11584@apple.Apple.Com>
Date: 4 Jun 88 00:38:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: apple.11584
References: <21441@think.UUCP> <144@iravcl.ira.uka.de>
Reply-To: rekieta@apple.UUCP (Paul Rekieta)
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 34

In article <144@iravcl.ira.uka.de> joachim@iravcl.ira.uka.de writes:
>In article <21441@think.UUCP>, ephraim@think.COM (ephraim vishniac) writes:
>> I'm especially interested in how well it can handle a situation such
>> as the following:
>> [...]
>
>I think MWS is not the product for you. Of course you can do that, but
>you'll have to write external commands to do that. The basic operation
>of MWS is the user wants something, the host sends something. What 
>you want to do requires a lot of history information or caching.
>

I don't think you need external commands. The basic operation of MWS is
to be passive and wait for either commands from the host, or events
generated by the user, primarily two event types: Menu selections, and
Dialog events (ie button pushes). It is reasonable for a MWS host program
to send commands to MWS while polling for events coming back.

>There are two other problems with MWS:
>(1) your MWS application cannot have documents itself. It can process
>    TEXT and MacWrite documents, but there is no double-clicking.

MWS can have documents containing local dialogs, menus, login scripts
and other host defined resources.  Double-clicking one of these documents
will start MWS and execute a pre-defined login script.

>(2) The transport layer supports no umlauted characters via transport
>    method 2, you must use ADSP or the binary method (which is in
>    general useless, because it assumes 8 bit, no XOn/XOff).
>

The transport problem will be solved soon.  We are working on a comm
module to send binary data in 7 bit mode allowing Xon/Xoff and errr
detection.