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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!husc6!lloyd!kent
From: kent@lloyd.camex.uucp (Kent Borg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: DTS and Compatibility (Was: MF)
Message-ID: <378@lloyd.camex.uucp>
Date: 13 Apr 89 14:57:22 GMT
References: <1562@neoucom.UUCP> <28399@apple.Apple.COM> <3637@brunix.UUCP> <1304@internal.Apple.COM> <3918@brunix.UUCP> <28878@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg)
Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA
Lines: 46

In article <28878@apple.Apple.COM> keith@Apple.COM (Keith Rollin) writes:
>The answer is to do what we've been saying all along; test for the features
>you need. Then, if we come out with Zowie-Finder you will automatically take
>advantage of the common features in it.

Take a *hint* guys!  Apple is working on Zowie-Finder and lots of the
stuff we are doing will break under Zowie-Finder.  DTS knows details
about Zowie-Finder and can try to steer us in the right direction--and
checking for all those interesting MultiFinder features by checking
for MultiFinder isn't the right direction.

Put that together with talk about when Apple might give us all the
preemptive multitasking, protected memory stuff we complain about not
having?

What have you got?  MultiFinder might change *drastically*, it might
do it in System 7.0, it might do it soon.  In fact the identical
version number might act rather differently at different times--say,
when on a 68000 vs. a 68030 machine.  So checking for the program
version will trick us in all kinds of ways.

But do we *have* ways for checking for features rather than for
MultiFinder?  No, so we gripe.  Maybe we should start carefully
listing what we want to know?  7.0 might have all its features in
place right now, but they could probably still easily add some feature
*reporting* before they freeze the code.  Let's do our best to help
them understand what we need to know about MultiFinder and they might
discover something crucial they hadn't though of and just manage to
slip it onto the end of SysEnvRec.

How about our annoyance at Bill Atkinson's breaking of all the rules?
Well, it's just possible that DTS is annoyed *too*, but Bill is a
powerful guy.  Don't expect DTS to bitch about him publicly.  They all
have fancy car and house payments to worry about.

So, what do we want to know?  Whether we are covering up icons on the
desktop (whether we can add our own icons--I think Apple should share
that resource), whether there are background tasks, whether we might
become backgrounded, whether we are in user mode, whether we
are/might-be set-aside/shrunk-into-an-icon...   Let's make a list.


Kent Borg
kent@lloyd.uucp
or
...!hscfvax!lloyd!kent