Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!udel!mmdf
From: wzg91@ttacs1.ttu.edu (BROWN, KEVIN)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Grrrr...BCPL....
Message-ID: <14874@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 7 May 89 14:23:46 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 53

In article <11530@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.uucp (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
>In article <6762@cbmvax.UUCP> jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes:
>>	Without Tripos there might not have been an Amiga (or a Commodore).
>>
>	You might care to talk to Carl Sassenrath about that.
>

Out of curiosity, does Carl Sassenrath exist on this newsgroup?

>>	Also, who ever said we have to keep the DOS in BCPL forever?  [ ... ]
>
>	Ah, but those miserable BPTR's and BSTR's are forever.

Not if they implement the suggestion I made before: cdos.library (which
massages the incoming and outgoing data, converting CPTRs and CSTRs to
BPTRs and BSTRs before calling dos.library, and vice versa before returning
to the caller).  This could presumably replace dos.library in the ROMs
later on (with dos.library now residing on disk and performing the reverse
function that cdos.library used to perform, and calling cdos.library),
eventually becoming a full rewrite of DOS sometime in the far future.  New
structures would have to be defined, which consist of CPTRs and CSTRs in
place of BPTRs and BSTRs, but other than that there would be no
differences.

>
>	Take heart; worse things could have happened than AmigaDOS.  An
>MS-DOS style filesystem comes to mind.

Which is worse than AmigaDOS in a LOT of ways (no device names, no true
volume names, and 8-character filenames to name a few), but better in some.
*IT*, at least, doesn't search all over the disk trying to get a directory
listing (does FFS?), and it's callable from everywhere (mainly because
there is no such thing as a task or a DOS process in MS-DOS, so that 
basically means that this "feature" doesn't really count :-). 

Yes, it could have been worse, but I also think it could have been a LOT 
better.  As I mention in a different post, there IS a solution.

>_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
>Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape	INET: well!ewhac@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
> \_ -_		Recumbent Bikes:	UUCP: pacbell > !{well,unicom}!ewhac
>O----^o	      The Only Way To Fly.	      hplabs / (pronounced "AE-wack")
>"Work FOR?  I don't work FOR anybody!  I'm just having fun."  -- The Doctor



				Kevin Brown

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