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From: peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Solution to the Network/Boot Disk/Font Problem?
Message-ID: <1887@aucs.UUCP>
Date: 18 May 89 11:50:23 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia
Lines: 38

We have a Mac network here (using MacJANET) and one of our biggest
problems is having insufficient room on the boot disks we distribute
to put anything more than a small selection of fonts and DAs.

I have in mind a possible solution to this problem, but I don't know
if it's possible. What I'd like to do is after a user has connected to
the file server, have a program run that opens a public, read-only fonts
file (on the server of course) that contains all the fonts that the user
needs. The boot disk itself could be configured to have the minimum fonts
required--Geneva, Monaco, and Chicago--leaving room on the boot disk for
other more useful things likes inits and cdevs.

What I am suggesting is obviously something like Suitcase, but Suitcase
doesn't do what we want (we couldn't distribute it to students anyway--we'd
have to have a copy of the init on each boot disk we give out, which is
300 or more, and the students get to keep the boot disks). We need to have
an application that launches just after login is completed that opens the
necessary font files and makes them available to future running applications.
Is this as simple as opening the resource file and leaving it open after
the program completes, or is there something more involved in setting up
this sort of "Suitcase" like concept. Being able to launch the program
after login is not a problem--we have control at this point and can do
anything we want to program (provided the program is small enough to
fit on the boot disk--we use LSPascal as it seems to give compact code).

And of course, we would like the same thing done for DAs. I presume the
approach for DAs would be different than that for fonts, but can DAs
also be handled in the fashion I've described?

I would appeciate any information that anyone can give me on this idea.
Since only about 70% of this news group makes it to our site, please
post your responses to me if you can (as well as to the net). Thanx!

-- 
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU