Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!unido!iraun1!iraul1!thschulz
From: thschulz@iraul1.ira.uka.de (Thomas Schulz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Task-to-task communication under MultiFinder
Message-ID: <586@iraun1.ira.uka.de>
Date: 13 Jun 88 10:04:37 GMT
Sender: news@iraun1.ira.uka.de
Reply-To: thschulz@iraul1.ira.uka.de (Thomas Schulz)
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, W.-Germany
Lines: 41

Apple announced a task-to-task communication mechanism
for applications under MultiFinder with System Tools 7.0
-- Well, that sounds good but leaves some questions open:

Will the MultiFinder include a scheduler which grants
CPU-access to the tasks based on communication needs,
priority etc.?

Will applications be able to send events/messages/anything
to other applications and then let the MultiFinder switch
to this particular co-task?

How will the communication protocol / language look like ?
Clipboard usage as in Switcher ? AppleTalk ? TCP/IP ? Remote
Procedure Calls ? Sockets ?

Certainly we need a general mechanism which is transparent
to communicating to tasks on the same CPU or via network to
tasks (e.g. servers) on other machines (even non-Macs)- for
that reason Apple should base this task-to-task comm. mechanism
on available "standard" comm. protocols: AppleTalk, TCP/IP,
RPCs. It would be the MultiFinders/Schedulers work to
manage
connections on the same Mac.

Has Apple plans to develop the MacOS into a full
multi-user,
multi-task system ?

We plan to have an application communicate with HyperCard;
is doesn't make sense to include the application as XCMDS
into HyperCard, nor does it perfectly make sense to have it
running as a background-only application. Even if we would
implement the latter, we would appreciate a clear
communication mechanism between applications under
MultiFinder.

Does  anybody else work on projects with communicating
applications on the same Mac?

Tom Schulz