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From: michael@mcdchg.chg.mcd.mot.com (Michael Bodine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Changing Paradigms (Re: The Neverending Flame (war))
Message-ID: <29819@mcdchg.chg.mcd.mot.com>
Date: 20 Dec 89 23:43:22 GMT
References: <6767@tank.uchicago.edu> <1989Dec17.112127.27333@me.toronto.edu> <14960@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <7777@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <3450@husc6.harvard.edu> <1989Dec19.152919.7284@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <4125@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: michael@mcdchg.chi.il.us (Michael Bodine)
Organization: Motorola Microcomputer, Schaumburg, IL
Lines: 27

Richard Schaut (schaut@cat9.CS.WISC.EDU) writes:
> In article <1989Dec19.152919.7284@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) writes:
> |   [Intelligence] is the ability to solve complicated problems by
> | combining pieces of a solution, being able to see how to do a 
> | given task by working with convenient pre-existing things. It is the
> The current situation on both the Macs and the PCs is marked by the
> existence of monolithic/do-everythin-immaginable programs.  Will the
> advent of multitasking/multithreading OS' on both machines result in
> a shift from the paradigm of the monolith to the paradigm of programs
> built from small building blocks that the user can piece together to
> fit his own needs?  If the interprocess communication facilities are
Ooooh!  Yeah!  I'm just getting rolling on programming things on my Mac.
The hassle, as a user, of exporting a file to some standard (PICT or TEXT)
thus losing all of the nice things about the file in the process, so you
can "pipe" it to another application is a big hassle.  Multifinder and the
Scrapbook are better, but not much -- information is often not fully 
transferable this way and the amount of mousing needed is tedious!  If
there was something more analagous to unix pipes, the building block paradigm
would be more convenient than cutting/pasting or exporting.  However,
there would still be a lot of problems in that, even as closely controlled
as some of the Mac data are, palette differences, Postscript handling, 
internal formats, etc., etc. would probably still cause a lot of data 
to be lost through the pipe.  Apple would have to do a lot more enforcing
somehow to make everyone more compatible.  A tough row to hoe...
-- 
[ Michael Bodine, michael@chg.mcd.mot.com, Dial: (312) 576-7840, FAX: x8875    ]
[ Opinions expressed are mine!  All mine!  Motorola couldn't have them even if ][ they wanted them!  No one else agrees with me;  why should my employer?      ]