Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!husc6!endor!siegel
From: siegel@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MAJOR MAC IIx PROBLEMS!!!!! APP
Message-ID: <1149@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 89 03:00:20 GMT
References: <35965@think.UUCP> <46100273@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: siegel@endor.UUCP (Rich Siegel)
Organization: Symantec/THINK Technologies, Bedford, MA
Lines: 34

In article <46100273@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>And for good reason. When I tried programming a MAC, it was devilishly
>difficult to get any good, useable info. It all looked like it
>was written for Pascal, and I was using Fortran. Besides, Apple
>clearly stated "One Mac, the same, Now And Forever". They never
>mentioned Multifinder or anything else. I wrote a perfectly 100%
>legal Fortran program that won't run on a Mac II. This has NEVER
>
>Why is the Mac different?

	Actually, what Apple says is that programs that follow the 
guidelines in Inside Macintosh will run correctly on current and
future Macintosh architectures, which includes everything from
the Mac 128 to a Mac SE/030, 128K to 8MB of RAM, Mac OS or Unix.

	The catch is that a program generator (compiler/linker
combination, in other words) must also produce a program that follows
the guidelines. If your Fortran environment, for example, masks master
pointers with $00FFFFFF to clear the attributes, your program probably
won't work under the next OS. If your Fortran compiler's runtime 
libraries assume that they're the only application on the machine
(i.e. no MultiFinder) it will break now.

		--Rich

Rich Siegel
Staff Software Developer
THINK Technologies Division, Symantec Corp.
Internet: siegel@endor.harvard.edu
UUCP: ..harvard!endor!siegel
Phone: (617) 275-4800 x305

Any opinions stated in this article do not necessarily reflect the views
or policies of Symantec Corporation or its employees.