Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!xanth!mcnc!ece-csc!jnh
From: jnh@ece-csc.UUCP (Joseph Nathan Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple developers & programming on the Mac
Message-ID: <3923@ece-csc.UUCP>
Date: 19 Feb 89 05:59:57 GMT
References: <1309@ndmath.UUCP> <10330136@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: jnh@ece-csc.UUCP (Joseph Nathan Hall)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
Lines: 31

In article <10330136@accuvax.nwu.edu> bob@accuvax.nwu.edu (Bob Hablutzel) writes:
>
>What DEC does have, and Apple could and should and would improve their 
>machine if they did, is the best damn documentation I've ever layed my
>eyes on. These people actually believe in (oh no!) _examples_ of what the
>routines do. For complicated routines, you can have several pages of examples
>to should the many different ways the routine can be used. APPLE SHOULD
...

Excuse me if I sound glib, but have you used (for example) LIB$FIND_FILE
lately?  (Or worse, LIB$FILE_SCAN or the SYS$ equivalent?)  Shudder.  Unless
you're adept at the mental MACRO-to-C or FORTRAN-to-C conversion (neither
is so easy considering the VAX Calling Standard's complexity), well, you're
likely to experiment with a lot of different parameter lists before you
find the one that works ...

For what it's worth, I don't think the VMS documentation is that much more
complete than the Mac documentation.  VMS documentation is much more
centralized, however, and I think the Tech Notes are something of an
abomination.  Inside Macintosh should have been loose-leaf all along, and
it should be updated piece-wise as necessary, and totally on a regular
basis (about every year).  Tech Notes?  Yuck!  Interesting stuff, but
why can't it be in Inside Mac where it belongs?  (Even worse are the two
"odd" Inside Macs IV and V ...)

lately?  (Or worse, LIB$FILE_SCAN or the system equivalent?)
-- 
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  v   sss  || the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my
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