Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple System 7.0
Message-ID: <6833@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 11 May 89 17:25:38 GMT
References: <11276@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 46

in article <11276@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>, dorourke@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (David M. O'Rourke) says:

> In article <17152@usc.edu> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>>Interesting.  My spreadsheet, database and comm program support both clipboard
>>and AREXX. I can fire up my comm program from the database phonebook, 
>>include downloaded data in the spreadsheet or database, while I am editing
>>something else at the same time.

>   But it's their own clipboard protocol, not a standard OS protocol.

There is a clipboard.device which is standard on the Amiga.  Perhaps a more
draconic (eg, like Apple) approach to those applications that don't use it
would have been a good move way back when.  Another part of the problem is
that a simple, Mac-like clipboard, isn't sufficient to a system with lots
of different things running, any one of which could get clipped out of 
asynchronously with an application being pasted into.

> I can do all of the above under Multifinder, so it's really no big
> deal.  You can launch Excel, SmartCom, MPW, and MacWrite and have a download
> going on in Smartcom while doing something in excel.

AREXX is not a clipboard protocol, it's something quite different.  Can you 
write a MacWrite macro that instructs SmartCom to fetch a table of numbers
from it's host, feed 'em to Execl for computation with some other numbers,
and then read them into your MacWrite session?  That's the kind of thing that
AREXX is good for.

> At least it's planned, announced and supported.
> Apple's moving forward with the OS addressing problems and limitations while
> trying to maintain compatibility with over 5000 S/W packages.

Well, a good number of those limitations were missing from the 1.0 release of 
the Amiga OS (though 1.0 was full of bugs, which should be a familiar event
to anyone who uses the first release of any new Mac system).  The Amiga's OS
has a number of areas to work on that Apple got right the first time.  For
the kinds of things I, personally, need, the Amiga feature set gives me a
useful computer, the Mac really doesn't.  I can't answer for anyone else...

> \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|/////////////////////////////////////////
> David M. O'Rourke____________________|_____________dorourke@polyslo.calpoly.edu
> |       It's only 1's & 0's, so how difficult can Computer Science be?        |
> |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession