From: strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Macintosh bigots
Date: 17 Nov 92 11:48:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: gmd.strobl.722000906
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany

In <#aw1bwg@rpi.edu> johnsd2@vccsouth16.its.rpi.edu.its1 (Daniel Norman Johnson) writes:

>In article 7M8@news.cso.uiuc.edu, rvenkate@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Ravikuma Venkateswar) writes:

[...]
>>
>>From Byte Magazine October 92:
>>
>>Dell 466DE i486DX2 66 MHz 
>>8 MB RAM, 230MB IDE HDD, 6 EISA slots, 128K cache, accel. video,
>>15" 1024X768 .28 monitor, one floppy drive, MSDOS 5.0 -------------$3899

>How deep is that monitor? 

The color depth is a feature of the video interface, not the monitor,
right?

>What sort of floppy drive? 

Most probably a 1,44 MByte 3-1/2" drive.

>It doens't
>include windows? What warranty and suchlike? How's the documentation
>and setup and so on for this computer? Mouse? What ports
>does it have (if any)?

Most Dell computers have one parallel and two serial interfaces. 
This may have changed - I bought my last DELL computer years ago -,
but I doubt it. Add another 50 $ for these interfaces, if you like.

>>Gateway i486DX2 66 MHz
>>8 MB RAM, 340MB SCSI HDD, 6 EISA slots, 128K cache, accel. video,
>>14" 1024X768 .28 monitor, two floppy drives, MSDOS 5.0, Windows3.1, mouse
>>and choice of software (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, TPW, paradox) ----$3995

>Basically the same questions; but this one has windows. :)

>>cheap clone
>>Comtrade 486 EISA advantage i486DX2 66 MHz
>>4 MB RAM, 130MB IDE HDD,              , 64K cache, accel. local bus video,
>>14" 1024X768 .28 monitor, two floppy drives, MSDOS 5.0, Windows 3.1, mouse
>>							      -----$2375

>Dat is a cheap clone!
>This one has a mouse too!

>>Apple Quadra 950 M040 33 MHz (Note: educational price at UIUC)
>>8 MB RAM, 400MB HD, 5 NuBus slots, one floppy drive, mouse,
>>system 7 ----------------------------------------------------------$5952

>I already know about this guy. (you forgot to mention various other
>things it has like ethernet, builtin video [you did mention the video
>cards on above clones!], sound, etc. And I think it has a PDS slot too.

But he mentioned "accel. video" for all the computers but the "cheap
clone" one, and in the description for that one he said: "accel. 
local bus video"!

[...]

>>>>>As for the kludgy thing, sure looks kludgy to me. You still have to
>>>>>have separate files for your (non-editable) resources, right? Kludge!
>>>>
>>>>Resources are editable with programmers' tools. Users don't have to edit
>>>>resources. And they're easier to use for multiple executables if they are
>>>>in separate files (any executable can share a DLL).
>>
>>>But you MUST put them in separate files- ALWAYS. This means that
>>>a program CANNOT be one file. That sux.
>>
>>Resources can be embedded in executables. It's just that you don't usually
>>want to.

>Waitasec? Most people are saying Im wronge, you MUST so embed them?

Resources, i.e. icons, bitmaps, strings, menues, accelerators, dialog
templates have to be bound to executables, in order to be accessible
via the API mechanism to access resources. THere are no separate,
stand-alone resources. BUT ... Windows has DLL, dynamic link libraries,
which can have attached resources, too. In fact, there is almost no
difference between an executable program and a dynamic library, both
have exactly the same format. If you put your dialog templates into
a dll instead of the main executable, two or more applications can
share the resources (and the code) in that dll. If you put them into
the main executable - which is the usual way to do it in small applications,
you only have one file, which contains both the resources and the
application code. 

Instead of putting dialogs, menues, icons etc. into resources and
loading them from there, one can construct these objects during
runtime, too, but this is unusual, for various reasons.

>>>And I meant that programs can't edit their own resources, or use
>>>resources in the files they make. They are actually rather handy
>>>little things.
>>
>>They can.

>I dont think so. MS-DOS does not have a resource fork, right?

Doesn't matter. A program can't attach a resource to a data file,
that's true, because MSDOS doesn't have multiple streams of data in
one file. But you specifically said "can't edit THEIR OWN RESOURCES",
i.e. resources attached to the executable. The New Executable format
used for Windows and OS/2 programs is quite well defined, and 
has both a code and a resource part.

Wolfgang Strobl
#include <std.disclaimer.hpp>
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy