Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!claris!peirce
From: peirce@claris.com (Michael Peirce)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 8.0: no more DA's.
Message-ID: <7440@claris.com>
Date: 15 Dec 88 22:29:41 GMT
References: <1988Dec14.223739.16280@cs.rochester.edu> <321@internal.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: peirce@claris.com (Michael Peirce)
Organization: Claris Corporation, Mountain View CA
Lines: 35

In article <321@internal.Apple.COM> goldman@Apple.COM (Phil Goldman) writes:
>In article <1988Dec14.223739.16280@cs.rochester.edu> @DOUGHNUT.CS.ROCHESTER.EDU:miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU writes:
>>It's something of a pity multifinder doesn't already do this; one could have
>>a reasonable yet small IPC standard based on pointers to heap objects... and
>>then consumers of a stream could run simultaneously with the producer,
>>rather than the current braindamage of producing a file, switching to the
>>next program, reading the file...
>
>This has nothing to do with whether the multitasking is preemptive or not.
>In fact, doing producer/consumer on shared memory *is* possible with
>MultiFinder.  It is absolutely not necessary to do IPC thru files.
>
I've got to throw in my two cents here.   There IS a form of "IPC" on
that Mac already that is fully supported by Apple:  AppleTalk.
It's true that you have to have it turned on and that it may not be
as efficient as something that comes along later, but it does have the
benefit that it can span multiple machines with no added effort. 

I've written a number of programs that talk back and forth between each    
other on the same machine using MultiFinder.  It works fine.  I AM looking
forward to formal IPC supported on the Mac (some form of shared global
sections mapped between multiple process address spaces would make a
certain class of program possible on the mac), but you can do a reasonably
useful form of IPC using legitimate techniques today.

-- michael

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