Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!oliveb!tymix!antares!jms From: jms@antares.UUCP (joe smith) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: How applications can autoinstall Summary: Don't do it the MAC way Message-ID: <306@antares.UUCP> Date: 14 Dec 88 02:31:13 GMT References: <8812100429.AA08669@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> Reply-To: jms@antares.UUCP (joe smith) Organization: Tymnet QSATS, San Jose CA Lines: 30 In article limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) writes: >Now the only problem is how to the projects find their tools. >TOOLS=ToolName:ToolNameProgram is the common way to do this. [stuff deleted] >The other method that I thought of was to not re-invent the wheel and >find out what Mac users do. I've never heard of this kind of >discussion with Mac users. (and if their OS does something "extra" to >help out maybe this could be in 1.4?) :-) > Tom Limoncelli Drew University Madison NJ 201-408-5389 I have heard nasty things when the Macintosh DeskTop file fills up. Exceed 228k and you're dead (or something to that effect). As I understand it, each tool is registered with Apple to get a unique 4-byte ID. Whenever a tools is moved, its new location is written in the DeskTop, overwritting any previous entry with that ID. When a project icon is selected, the Finder looks at the 4-byte ID, grunges thru the DeskTop, and launches the tool. I don't know how it handles having version 2a of a program in one directory and version 2b in another. I don't know if it cares if a program is copied from the hard disk to a floppy (I'd hate to see it remember the copy on the floppy and forget the hard disk. There was some discussion on this subject here about 5 months ago - the consensus was "let's not do it the Mac way". I'm sure some Mac techie will provide more reasons pro and con. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | TYMNET:JMS@F29 CA:"POPJ P," UUCP:{ames|pyramid}oliveb!tymix!antares!jms | | INTERNET:(Real Soon Now) Amiga Hacker PHONE:Joe Smith @ (408)922-6220 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+