Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!mailrus!eecae!cps3xx!usenet
From: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Text editor help
Message-ID: <764@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 4 Oct 88 17:00:04 GMT
References: <2476@rti.UUCP> <2580001@hpausla.HP.COM>
Organization: Engineering, Michigan State U., E. Lansing MI
Lines: 29
In-reply-to: jcl@hpausla.HP.COM's message of 3 Oct 88 03:43:41 GMT

In article <2580001@hpausla.HP.COM>, Jeff Laing (jcl@hpausla.hp.com) writes:
>>Everyone agrees that TextEdit should handle tabs, except Apple.
>>Unfortunately, theirs is the only opinion that counts.
>
>Hmmm. Now thats an interesting issue, isnt it?  Just exactly what would happen
>if the MacProgrammer community started acting like the unix equivalents?
>
>What would happen if, instead of creating neat little hacks like QuickFolder,
>someone actually sat down and wrote a P.D (or shareware or whatever) version
>of PACK-3 that had the new functionallity in it?  Can it be that hard?

  No, it probably wouldn't be that hard, if you looked at the code for
the current one.  But what would happen is simple: the Mac OS would be
all screwed up and fragment into as many versions as UNIX.  Are
programs under UNIX portable?  No way!  There's System V, System III,
BSD 4.2, BSD 4.3, Ultrix 1.x, Ultrix 2.x, SunOS 3.x, SunOS 4.x, ....
  Nobody would ever be able to write an application and guarantee it
would work under someone else's system file.  Remember, the system
file is shared between ALL applications.  What if you have a nifty
package 3 which does QuickFolder things, and one which does SFVol
things?  How to combine them?
  There's a good reason why Apple forbids distribution of modified
system files with applications: it means they don't have to look for
bugs which aren't theirs.  Let's keep it that way.

+----------------------------------+------------------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student)	   | "VMS forever!"	    |
| Michigan State University	   | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu |
+----------------------------------+------------------------+