HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM Funny
Date: 13 Oct 92 14:21:56 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <strobl.718935782@gmd.de>, strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:
> 
> ZXCV doesn't form a nice block on *my* keyboard, because it has
> the Y and Z exchanged. And to X something out isn't that common
> here, either - we usually use the "-" character to do that.

Good point. 

Consider the shortcut scenario when you are using Chinese or Korean. There's
no hope of picking out one keyboard character, since there's no phonetic
spelling.

In these cases, you are much better off using the mouse. You'd have to
type an entire word just to get a shortcut. <grin>

-- 
Bill Coleman, AA4LR                ! CIS: 76067,2327    AppleLink: D1958
Principal Software Engineer        ! Packet Radio: AA4LR @ W4QO
Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. ! UUCP: uunet!hayes!bcoleman
POB 105203 Atlanta, GA 30348 USA   ! Internet: bcoleman%hayes@uunet.uu.net
Disclaimer: "My employer doesn't pay me to have opinions."
Quote: "The same light shines on vineyards that makes deserts." -Steve Hackett.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: bmccnnll@unix1.tcd.ie (Barry McConnell)
Subject: Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 22:37:27 GMT

In <ewright.718566123@convex.convex.com> ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:

>Exactly.  Because there are times when a program will *need* 100%
>of the CPU cycles.  When it's doing realtime graphics, for example.

On the Amiga, you use the Forbid() .. Permit() combination to "turn off"
multitasking. In effect, you are back down to co-operative multitasking, in
that you can hold the entire system at your mercy via this method. I would
thus consider pre-emptive multitasking a superset of co-operative multitasking,
and hence there is no valid argument for *not* having it! ;-)

>With preemptive multitasking, there's no way to guarantee this. Not
>unless you set the priority so high that you effectively block the
>other programs out.  But the priority remains fixed during the entire
>time the program is running, so the program with high priority will
>continue to hog CPU cycles even when it's doing something that isn't
>time critical.

Again, on the Amiga, the priority of an application can be changed dynamically.
You can be running at priority 0 for most of the time, and priority 5 for the
time when you *absolutely need* to get something done.

Of course, well-written applications will allow the user to set the priority
for the different situations, which makes for a far more friendly and 
customisable environment.

And if all else fails, it's out with one of the many task manager-style
programs, and you set the priority to whatever you like!

>Sure, there are some programs that don't multitask well, but there's
>a simple solution to that problem: don't buy them.  Most software
>packages sell for one hundred to several hundred dollars.  For that
>price, software companies should be able to get their programmers
>to use a simple system call.

They should, but they don't. I own an Amiga, but have spent the last two 
months or so doing software devlopment (in FileMaker Pro) on the Mac. The
number of times I got *so frustrated* that I couldn't do trivial things like
pull down the calculator while the "Field Definitions" dialog box was open, or
type up a document in Word 5 while FileMaker was busy recovering a file...

Hearing someone ask me "My Mac is busy; can I borrow yours?" really drove me
bananas!

Barry.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: ccw@prefect.uucp (26554-wood)
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 21:12:29 GMT

In article <1992Oct3.203840.34763@news.th-darmstadt.de> wallmann@backus.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Natuerlich!) writes:
>In article <1992Oct1.202130.27323@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> ccw@prefect.uucp (26554-wood) writes:

>>Where have you been?  (this group is such a fun flame-fest!)  Have you
>>not heard of the "Apple Menu" on a macintosh?  With System 7, which has
>>only been out for a year now (maybe more...) it's trivial to add an
>>application to the apple menu, and once you do, it's a single menu
>>selection that's _always_ available.  Easier than setting up a path,
>>too!  Because if you move the folder in which the application resides,
>>you don't have to do _anything_.  The apple menu still works.  It'll
>>work even if the application is on a volume mounted over the network.

>>Chris

>Well how many apps can you stick in there, a dozen, twenty a hundred ?

>Nat!

Right now, my Apple menu has 25 entries, one of which has a lower level
(Control Panel, combined with BeHierarchic).  All the rest of the
commands I need are found on other menus (the "make alias" command,
better than unix's "ln -s", and easier to use, is on the file menu), or
are accessed by direct manipulation (no move command is needed, just
move the file.)

Enough for me.  If I need more organization, I could group my own
commands into folders, and have them take up less space in the apple
menu.

Chris




Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
                         or ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com
From: jimwong@owlnet.rice.edu (Jim Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM Funny
Date: 14 Oct 92 16:14:30 GMT
Article-I.D.: rice.Bw4D46.Bv4
Organization: Rice University

In article <strobl.719016228@gmd.de> strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:
>
>ISO == IBM Standard Organization. Didn't you know?
>

Um, I'm fairly sure your completely wrong here.

-- 
Jim Wong (jimwong@owlnet.rice.edu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: straka@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (richard.j.straka)
Subject: Re: What's Easier To Use (read "better")
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 13:33:14 GMT

In article <ibhan.718089305@husc8> ibhan@husc8.harvard.edu (Ishir Bhan) writes:
>accuracy.  I would prefer it if Apple just made the Finder look better. 
>No, there are no practical uses for it, but it would be a nice bonus.  The
>NeXT LOOKS COOL.

>How about getting rid of that ugly Chicago font.

Believe it or not, Apple had real, ergonomic *reasons* for most all of the
user interface components that they implemented back in 1984 (borrowed many
from Xerox, of course :-)).

The Chicago font was designed to provide legible text even when the menu bar
item was grayed out.  This is an important consideration for a 1-bit/pixel
display system, which, of course could be dispensed with for systems using
higher bit depths.

Managing this (menu bar font) change on the Mac OS along with selectable
bit depths via the monitors control panel is difficult, of course.  The two
capabilities overlap in functionality, which implies the need for a common
control mechanism (which is not currently in place).  On the other hand,
several large-screen display makers have software to re-configure the manue
bar fonts, so this may not really be that much of a limitation.

Of course, many people who just use Macs on a very passing basis give it away
every time when they produce some graphic or other using the Chicago font.
It just goes to show how even total newcomers to the Mac can produce
acceptable output.
-- 
Richard Straka      AT&T Bell Laboratories
UUCP:     att!ihlpw!straka       INTERNET: richard.straka@att.com
From the 'ed' manual page: "A one-character regular expression is a regular
expression that matches whatever the one-character regular expression matches."
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: straka@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (richard.j.straka)
Subject: Re: Multiple Video (was: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Organization: AT&T
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 02:46:57 GMT

I still find it amazing that on a multiple monitor Mac setup, you can size
a window to span across monitors of vastly different bit depths, and
everything just works right (dithering as appropriate for each monitor). 
I've seen a 24-bit image going across a 24-bit to 1-bit monitor, and even
had a Mathematica shaded bessel function flyby animation running real-time
across a 8-bit and 1-bit monitor.  This latter one was about 3-4 years
ago!  Really impressive! 
-- 
Richard Straka      AT&T Bell Laboratories
UUCP:     att!ihlpw!straka       INTERNET: richard.straka@att.com
From the 'ed' manual page: "A one-character regular expression is a regular
expression that matches whatever the one-character regular expression matches."
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.programmer
From: u9147063@cs.uow.edu.au (Richard Barry Ling)
Subject: Re: Amiga doesn't pre-emptive multitask? BZZZZT!! Wrong!!
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University, Australia
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1992 04:17:57 GMT

ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:

>bmccnnll@unix1.tcd.ie (Barry McConnell) writes:

>>Oh for heaven's sake. Your Mac's successful operation depends on all your
>>software being written correctly. What's your point? Do you think people set
>>out to write unfriendly programs?

>Okay, for anyone who missed it.

>******** MY POINT ********

>Both the Macintosh and the Amiga use cooperative multitasking schemes.
>The programmer must cooperate by doing, no doing, or undoing certain
>things at certain points in the program to make the system work correctly.
>Without this capability, it is impossible to write programs that guarantee
>timely and effective interaction with the user. 

>***************************

Alas, that is not the case.  The Amiga can do co-operative multitasking, but
it is a matter of the programmer having to deliberately exclude other
processes from operating (as opposed to the Mac where it is required for the
programmer to specifically allow other processes to operate).  This is
because the default condition in the OS is for all programs to run with
pre-emptive multitasking.  It is very rare for a program to use the Forbid()
call - it is normally reserved for the operating system itself.

The net result is this: to say that the Amiga doesn't pre-emptively
multitask is quite clearly false.

From The Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual (reprinted without permission):

    "The Amiga Exec library provides a real-time message-based multitasking
    operating environment  ...  many tasks can be operating simultaneously
    in the Amiga, with no task forced to be aware that another is present
    ...  Task scheduling is normally pre-emptive in nature.  The running
    task may lose the processor at nearly any moment by being displaced by
    another more urgent task."

Can anyone find a similar section in the Mac manuals indicating that the Mac
uses pre-emptive multitasking?  I'll be very interested to hear about it.

________________________________
Richard.  u9147063@cs.uow.edu.au
#include <standard_disclaimer.h>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle)
Subject: Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 06:04:27 GMT

In article <1992Oct16.040249.670@trl.oz.au> soh@tmp_ip_003.trl.OZ.AU (Soh Kam Hung) writes:
>with the user.  Yet, many users around the world have no problems with
>interactive sessions on UNIX machines.

In general there are a multitude of benefits to pre-emptive multitasking,
however, since you brought up the example of a Sparcstation, I have to
relay a little story.

My major professor wrote equivalent chunks of code for the Mac and the
Sparc (running X11) to draw and interactively re-shape Bezier curves using
the mouse.  The speed of interaction on a Mac IIci was MUCH faster and
smoother than on the Sparc (IPC), though the IPC had nothing else of
consequence running.  The Sparc should be considerably faster than a IIci,
esp. since the IIci was running System 7 (probably with various mailreaders,
etc runnning).  This was due to X-windows' event handling techniques.
How much of this shortcoming is to blame on pre-emptive multitasking I am
not completely sure, as I am not an expert in X windows.

The basic effect was the one that I'm sure many have seen where the curve
chases the mouse, rather than tracking it.  This is common even in commercial
X Windows programs.  Also, this particular prof is NOT lacking in programming
skills.

I guess this goes to say that as wonderful as pre-emptive multitasking might
be, the user interface of certain implementations of it DOES suffer from
something.  It also might be the case that many Mac users' problems with 
pre-emptive multitasking in a GUI setting might be due to its common 
implementations, such as X-windows.

Jess Holle
the happy Mac user
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: soh@tmp_ip_003.trl.OZ.AU (Soh Kam Hung)
Subject: Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 04:02:49 GMT

ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:

>Both the Macintosh and the Amiga use cooperative multitasking schemes.
>The programmer must cooperate by doing, no doing, or undoing certain
>things at certain points in the program to make the system work correctly.
>Without this capability, it is impossible to write programs that guarantee
>timely and effective interaction with the user. 

Your conclusion is unjustified.  Regardless of whether a programmer
cooperates with the OS has nothing at all to do with whether or not the
OS provides a pre-emptive multitasking environment.  Using your
argument, it would be impossible for so-called pre-emptive
multiprocessing OS such as UNIX to provide a reasonable user interface
with the user.  Yet, many users around the world have no problems with
interactive sessions on UNIX machines.

The SparcStation (a UNIX box) in front of me has (at last count) 62
processes running.  If your argument is correct, I must be a masochist
for using an X server, 6 xterms (terminal emulators), mail, news,
GnuEmacs, and the C++ compiler all at the same time!  Gawd, I wonder
how many people would like to suffer like me?

My old Amiga 1000 could run a terminal session, a game and an editor
all at the same time.  While I was editing a newsletter, my current
A3000 has run GnuEmacs, multiple shells, the occasional game (blush),
the TeX compiler, a DVI previewer, a PostScript interpreter and
previewer, and a print job all at the same time.  As far as I know,
none of these programs require any special code to ``cooperate'' with
the OS.  In addition, I haven't encountered any problems interacting
with my computer despite the pre-emptive nature of its OS.

Regards,

---
Soh Kam Hung, Network Management Research,     | h.soh@trl.oz.au  
TRL, POB 249 Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia | +61 3 253 6638
Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Date: 10 Oct 92 13:22:31 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Multiple Video (was: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Distribution: comp
From: jopa@tkk.tele.fi (Jorma Paananen)

johnsd2@vccnw05.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Norman Johnson) writes:
> In article <jopa.718627186@tkk.tele.fi>, jopa@tkk.tele.fi (Jorma Paananen) writes:
> |> No need to foold around. Using that screenBits.bounds gives the bounds
> |> of the main monitor. If you need a box that contains all the monitors
> |> you use (**GrayRgn).rgnBBox. (should be documented in IM or TN, I can't
> |> check it now) 

> Exactly. This is the fooling around I meant. Of course, if you want
> to be smart about it, you would walk the graphics device list to
> find the "best" monitor and use that monitors bounding box.

> But the point is just that a Mac with multiple monitors  does not act
> like it had one monitor (spanning them all) in all cases. The screenbits.bounds
> is an example- (most) things using this will only refer to the main
> monitor.

hmmm. But it refers to the main monitor because it has referred
to THE RECTANGLE OF THE SCREEN from day 1 when first mac came out.
GaryRgn (a global as well as screenBits is, not the device list)
has been avilable for programmers (IM V) from day 1 when first MacII
came out (first Mac where you can use more than one monitor)

If that screenBits had changed to give you a rectangle spanning
all monitors, what would happen to old applications that
think that evrything inside that rectangel is visible?
And on the other hand now with this GrayRgn you get more
information than only that rectangle.

My point is that QD makes it possible that all screens are
used as one desktop area from the programmers point of view.
If a programmer still uses only that screenBits in evry
situation, we should just say to him/her: RTFM. I wouldn't call
reading the OS documentation fooling around.

Totally different issue is to talk about WHEN Mac with
more monitors should behave (users view) as if it only
had one monitor spanning them all.

Jorma jopa@th.tele.fi
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: cpearce@nemesis.acs.unt.edu (Chris Pearce)
Subject: Trepidations of a longtime Mac user
Organization: University of North Texas
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 04:58:51 GMT

[ My ability to post is quite limited: I can't quote the previous text. ]

A poster was complaining about the frequent crashes he experienced with
Macs. He also claims that his 386, a PC, is extremely reliable.

My experience has been the opposite. The Mac I have used (pre-system 7)
crashed fairly infrequently, whereas my 386 PC at work crashes 2 to 3
times a day, sometimes more.

I think it comes down to the choice of applications and configurations
placed on a given PC. Good computers + bad software = unreliable
place to work. In general, I believe Mac software is better behaved
than PC software, but then I have also heard that System 7 shipped with 
1200 bugs. Oh well.

Just presenting the alternative viewpoint.

--
cpearce@nemesis.acs.unt.edu
Chris Pearce
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 17:26:20 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <1992Oct16.023119.28553@trl.oz.au> soh@tmp_ip_003.trl.OZ.AU (Soh Kam Hung) writes:

>Amiga program rarely have any need to block the OS, thus
>the Amiga allows preemptive multitasking almost all the time.

If that's true, it means Amiga programs rarely need to guarantee
timely feedback to user actions, which I find hard to believe.
From: strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM Funny
Date: 13 Oct 92 00:23:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: gmd.strobl.718935782
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany

In <strobl.718809464@gmd.de> strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:

>In <CKD.92Oct10234118@loiosh.eff.org> ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis) writes:

>> WS> Hm. To me, the Ctrl+C shortcut is very nonintuitive.

>>It's both intuitive ("[C]opy") and in a nice block on my keyboard with
>>Undo, Cut, and Paste (ZXCV).  To "X" something is a reasonably mnemonic
>>term for cutting it, and "V" looks like an insert-here mark to me.  Of
>>course it's not Ctrl-C here, but Cmd-C; Ctrl-C is left free for my term
>>program.

In addition to the English-centric "[C]opy", I just noticed another
problem whith you remark:

ZXCV doesn't form a nice block on *my* keyboard, because it has
the Y and Z exchanged. And to X something out isn't that common
here, either - we usually use the "-" character to do that.

The cursor keys, on the other hand, have a standard location,
and the insert and delete keys (and a few others) are even labeled
in my own language.

Wolfgang Strobl
#include <std.disclaimer.hpp>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: derek@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Dariusz Bolski)
Subject: Re: A-MaxII+ ?
Organization: OSU Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 06:15:30 GMT

In article <1992Oct14.044343.24767@gn.ecn.purdue.edu> jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle) writes:
>In article <Bw38ss.3Lp@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> faheyr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Bob Fahey) writes:
>>Game machines do not appear in academia. Amigas do. Macs do. IBM's do. NeXT's
>>do. and, yes, unfortunately IBM PC's do as well. Nintendos do not. Why? Because
>>it IS a game machine. Period. We use Amigas here for multimedia. I know of
>>many other univeristies which also use Amigas. (And it's not so the profs can
>>sit around playing games! That's what xtank and nettrek are for) ;-)
>
>I'm sure that Amiga's appear SOMEWHERE in academia.  Among the college
>campus's that I have been to, I have NEVER seen an Amiga anywhere but
>in a student's room, where Nintendo's are equally likely to reside.

Where was that ????

In here you can see Amigas in the faculty rooms too.
BTW. In the building I was working for the last two years were two computer labs.
Mac lab - consisted of about 14 machines (mostly of the class of IIsi) and
Amiga lab - consisted of about 16 Amigas 2000.
Guess what? While in the Mac Lab one could barely see someone working (two - three students at
the same time), in the Amiga Lab one could barely find a free machine. In fact there was about
four people per machine. Amiga Lab was always full (except late night hours). 
Draw your own conclusions,

>Jess Holle

Dariusz Bolski

Ps. Amiga 2000 is only a 7 MHz 68000 machine, yet most folks still
   preferred it to IIsi. What do you say?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: geoffrey@tafe.sa.edu.au (Geoffrey D. Bennett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't) (long)
Date: 16 Oct 92 14:35:31 GMT

mike_steiner@qm.claris.com (Mike Steiner) writes:

>> If MAC's are so damned clever, how come that our Mac's try to boot from
>> the scanner? Actually, we have to make sure the scanner is off whenever 
>> we have to restart the Mac (which happen quite often), or else the Mac 
>> reports a disk error!

>What does that have to do with reading floppy disks?  BTW, it might help
>you if you configured your scanner properly.  I've not seen any scanner
>that causes that problem.

How do you configure a Mac scanner?  I thought all Mac hardware add-ons
were just plug and play??  :-)

--
 ___
/  __
\___|eoffrey D. Bennett!-)               geoffrey@tafe.sa.edu.au

Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Date: Fri,  9 Oct 1992 13:12:53 -0400 
From: Carl B Jabido <cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT

Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.mac.advocacy: 9-Oct-92 Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2
and Window.. by Ted T. W. Leung@cs.brown 
> Frankly, as a Mac User, I think that MultiMedia (on either platform)
> is hype.

Yeah!  Someone else other than I has seen through the propaganda and
said that MM is just some selling point.
  
> >> Of course, OS/2 has quite a bit of features that MacOS doesn't
> >> have: pre-emptive MT, memory protection, multithreading, OO GUI,
> >> REXX, etc.
>  
> In what way is the WPS OO?  In it's implementation?  Who will care?

It's both implemented in OO and the user sees it as OO.  So, I guess the
users will care.  At least it's not Windows.
  
> Nan> As to the benefit of memory protection, I think lots of Mac users
> Nan> here would disagree with you.
>  
> Count me in.  But I know why.  Most people who don't know why don't
> care.  They just want to keep running their apps.  Which is really all
> most people want.   The most telling argument to me is that for
> everything except hacking, Mail, and News, I'd rather use the Mac II
> in our office over the SparcStation.  Yet the Sparcstation has
> pre-emptive MT, memory protection, multi-threading, etc, etc. 

Yes, everyone wants to keep running their apps.  But, if (I've used this
example before) a shareware app does something it's not supposed to do,
then you can't keep running your apps.  Memory protection is just one
way to keep the whole system from crashing.  It makes for a good
marketing tool too, just tell 'em you've got Crash Protection (tm from
IBM)!!  It doesn't take away from the OS, but it does add, so what
arguments do you have against it?

Carl Jabido