Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:40505 comp.sys.mac:44881
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!lai
From: lai@Apple.COM (Ed Lai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Changing Paradigms (Re: The Neverending Flame (war))
Message-ID: <37459@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 21 Dec 89 14:26:07 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> <29819@mcdchg.chg.mcd.mot.com>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 35

In article <29819@mcdchg.chg.mcd.mot.com> michael@mcdchg.chi.il.us (Michael Bodine) writes:
>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:
>> 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,

The Clipboard Magician DA (available from SUMEX) is built on the paradigm that
in stead of a big monolithic program, the main program should be no more than
a shell (the DA is about 14K). To do the real work there should be a lot of
small tool that can be installed and removed according to the user's need
(in this particular case there are a pool of 40 to 50 tools of about 2K each,
the number of tools keep growing since it can be written independently). Each
tool is in a sense like a pipe since it transform data from one form to another.
And the operation desired by the user may sometimes be achieved by a whole
sequence of transformation.

/* Disclaimer: All statments and opinions expressed are my own */
/* Edmund K. Lai                                               */
/* Apple Computer, MS75-6J                                     */
/* 20525 Mariani Ave,                                          */
/* Cupertino, CA 95014                                         */
/* (408)974-6272                                               */
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