America Online
APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
Tuesday, November 13, 1990 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Topic: Operating Systems
Forum Leader: Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet)
AFL Dyfet Okay, I guess we had better get started...contrary to popular
rumor, we are
AFL Dyfet NOT discussing plan 9 tonight :)...Instead, we will be discussing
Apple II
AFL Dyfet operating systems (in particular System 5.0.3, no doubt). I see
that Scott has
AFL Dyfet the floor now...GA Scott...
AFL Scott Is there anywhere documented the special text sequences to make
things
AFL Scott like bold text in resource strings? I know.. it's off topic!:)
AFL Dyfet (oops :)...GA Jonah...
ShanoJ What exactly do you mean, Scott? For likea statText control? There
you'd just
ShanoJ use the codes in the LETextBox section of the LE chapter...
ShanoJ (also there are nifty resource equates for those that come with
Rez... :)
AFL Scott Yeah, StatText... Ok... Thanks... I didn't think to look in the
lineEdit docs for Control Manager
AFL Scott stuff...:) Thanks!:)
AFL Dyfet Okay, Jonah, your next...GA...
ShanoJ My NeXT? Where?! :)
ShanoJ Okay, my qestion (especially for Dave): I need to get the mouse's
loaction from
ShanoJ an interrupt. Is there any good way to do this? In the ROM 01
machines there
ShanoJ are screen holes at $E0047C and $E0057C or some such that have the
mouse
ShanoJ loaction as long as the mouse has been initialized.... These don't
work on the
ShanoJ ROM 03, however... GetMouse only works id the DeskManager is
started, ReadMouse
ShanoJ makes the normal mouse operations loose data (menus will stay
pulled down even
ShanoJ after you let go of the button sometimes, etc.), and that's all
the way's I can
ShanoJ think of! Any hints? Is there any official Apple way to do
this?!
AFL Dyfet I see we are drifting from topic a little early here :)....If we
can keep to
AFL Dyfet the topic for for the early part of this conf, please...As to your
question,
AFL Dyfet Jonah, I do not have a suggestion off-hand, however, if you would
be willing
AFL Dyfet to post it into a folder, maybe we could get some feedback for you
there....
AFL Dyfet Okay, Marty, GA, you have the floor now...
AFL Marty I guess my question is rather unique (it pertains to tonight's
topic :)...
A2Evanglst Topic Police!!!!
A2Evanglst ;)
AFL Marty One or two members have reported problems in printing with
the...
AFL Marty AppleWorks GS Page Layout module under 5.0.3 and the new
ImageWriter II
AFL Marty printer driver...
AFL Marty Specifically, they report that AWGS "locks up" and requires
rebooting...
AFL Marty yet the same document prints without incident under 5.0.2...
AFL Marty Could this be attributed to additional memory requirements of
5.0.3
AFL Marty and/or the printer driver?
AFL Dyfet The new driver does use additional memory for buffering. Are any
of these
AFL Dyfet users on 'marginal' memory for AWGS already?
AFL Marty You could say that. Both members have 1.25 meg machines.
AFL Marty Apparently my guess was correct. I will post an appropriate
reply.
AFL Marty Thanks.
AFL Marty (done)
AFL Dyfet I do not know how much additional memory it uses offhand, but if
either Matt or
AFL Dyfet Dave know (*hint*)...
PoloPlayer What can you do on 5.0.3 that you can't do on the others besides
rename system
PoloPlayer Disk
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons ACE, the Audio Compression and Expansion tools, expand
Dave Lyons sound about twice as fast as they used to.
Dave Lyons There is a new ImageWriter LQ printer driver that takes advantage
of
Dave Lyons its higher resolution. The ImageWriter II driver is about 3 times
as fast as the old one.
Dave Lyons Standard File has a new look--instead of a Disk button you get a
Volumes button that shows you
Dave Lyons a list of all your volumes, so you can pick one straight away
instead of tabbing through them
Dave Lyons one at a time.
PoloPlayer oh yes, I noticed that! Cool!
Dave Lyons There are a fair number of bug fixes, some of which
PoloPlayer GReat!
Dave Lyons are obvious and some of which aren't.
PoloPlayer That is pretty neat!
Dave Lyons There are major things fixed in both Text Edit (you can edit more
than 4K of text without it doing
Dave Lyons bad things now) and the Resource Manager (it doesn't get confused
on return from ProDOS 8,
Dave Lyons and it correctly handles resizing resources in a file, which
should help immensely for things
Dave Lyons like Genesys and TML Pascal II.)
Dave Lyons ga
PoloPlayer whoa! There are a lot of newies!
AFL Dyfet GA Gibber...
A2Evanglst Unlike Mac System software... Apple doesn't have to update it
every week so it will work ;)
A2Evanglst :::End of Snide comments ;)
PoloPlayer Hmmm, is there a file I can d/l to read all the updates?
AFA Gary J You can download last weeks conference log, or this one when it
gets put up :)
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons Polo, the release notes will *eventually* be available from
Dave Lyons APDA, along with the disks, but so far APDA doesn't have them.
I'm sure somebody will post the
Dave Lyons APDA order number in Let's Discuss when it becomes available.
ga
PoloPlayer Ok...
AFL Dyfet GA Scott...
AFL Scott Is there a document available that tells about the new tool
call(s) and mods to the toolsets so we
AFL Scott may use them?
AFL Dyfet GA Matt...
Matt DTS All Apple Partners and Associates are being mailed the release
notes and documentation for the one new
Matt DTS call, ConvSeconds. <GA>
AFL Scott OK, thanks, Matt!:)
AFL Scott I'm done...:)
AFA JoeyS Dave: Will an update to NiftyList document anything new in
5.0.3?
AFL Dyfet Perhaps that one new call :)
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons Next time I do an upload it will
Dave Lyons have ConvSeconds in there, sure (and whatever small fixes
Dave Lyons I've discovered in the meantime, as usual). ga
AFL Dyfet Okay, GA Booger, you have the floor now...
BOOGERB using appleworks 3.0 with the timeout applications on a hard drive
Iam having
BOOGERB trouble assesing the timeout application with system 5.03 they
worked fine
BOOGERB with system 5.02 , the only way to use them is to put in the disk
and go from
BOOGERB there.
AFL Dyfet GA Marty...
AFL Marty I use AppleWorks with TimeOut under 5.0.3 without any problems at
all...
AFL Marty make sure you have the current version of TimeOut (3.01) as well
as current
AFL Marty versions of your TimeOut applciations.
AFL Marty done
BOOGERB everytime I try to get the timeout applications they can't be
found off the
BOOGERB hard drive but will fine them off the disk.
AFL Marty Aha... you need to reinstall TimeOut...
BOOGERB these are timeout applications for 3.0
AFL Marty and tell TimeOut the pathname to your To applications.
AFL Marty I'll send you EMail on it.
AFL Marty done
BOOGERB the only thing I changed on the hard drive was the operating
system
AFL Dyfet Okay, GA Tap...
AFC TAP ok, I was just going to ask if your path had changed after the
5.03 install
AFC TAP as TimeOut hard codes the path to the applications in the
aplwworks.system file
AFC TAP if you havea block editor you may wish to check it... or just
re-install
AFC TAP <done>
BOOGERB I don't think so
GSP1 You also want to be sure that TO.UTILITIES and installation come
from the same
GSP1 disk.
BOOGERB I am using a vulcan and copied from the disk with the t/o
applications to the
BOOGERB hard drive
AFL Marty Read my Email BoogerB. Copying from the floppy is what's causing
your problem.
BOOGERB ok marty thanks I will try what you are suggesting thanks again
AFL Marty That's why I get the big bucks. :)
AFL Dyfet Okay, in that case...let's get to the next Q...GA Ace...
DangardAce Oh goody.. now for some sweeping, off-tangent, and ludicrous
questions :)
DangardAce Firstly, I know this is a variable, but what is the minimum amount
of
DangardAce memory overhead needed for page rendering in the new IW2 driver.
Does
DangardAce the rendering clobber anything not spoken for? I guess maybe.. I
would
DangardAce imagine that for text itd be different from pictures..
AFL Dyfet GA Matt (Was waiting for this comment earlier :)...
Matt DTS Just a sec...
Matt DTS OK. The toolbox documentation says not to call the printing
routines unless you have a 10K block
Matt DTS available, so any printer driver is justified in not working if at
least 10K contiguous isn't
Matt DTS available. The new IW and IW LQ drivers attempt to spool to disk
if they can't get enough memory.
Matt DTS Text is not all that different than graphics since all are drawn
by QuickDraw. For more information
Matt DTS on how printer drivers work, there's a fabulously well-written
article on the subject in _develop_ #4.
Matt DTS <grin> GA
HeadCase Matt you're so modest
AFL Dyfet Thanks Matt....
DangardAce (Gee I wonder who wrote that article :)
DangardAce Where is the disk spooling piped to? Somewhere on the boot
volume?
DangardAce Also, to Dave, are there any planned updates for DIcED?
DangardAce And uh, just one more thing, this isn't 5.03 specific, but is
there a
DangardAce theoretical maximum to how many icons you can have in memory?
DangardAce Like, will Finder only accept the first 128 icons it encounters
(assuming
DangardAce there's enough free mem to hold them all)
Mac Hater hmm, sounds like a question for a Finder engineer.
AFA Gary J :)
AFL Dyfet Yes, it does...a chance for a new Finder person to prove himself
:)]
DangardAce And, uh, one other thing, is the Laserwriter GS driver still
using
DangardAce Imagewriter emulation to get the job done or are there any
PostScript
DangardAce primitives lurking in there, and uh, when do we get to see the
Animation and
DangardAce Shrinkit Toolsets.. just imagine being able to pack/unpack
animations on
DangardAce the fly.. Dragon's Lair startanims anyone? GA
AFL Marty (this guy must be on a sugar rush :)
AFL Dyfet GA Dave...
Dave Lyons There will be updates
Dave Lyons to DIcEd -sometime-, but I don't have a schedule. I have a
partly-done DIcEd 2.0 that I've been
Dave Lyons working on.
DangardAce !- are you aware that DicED doesn't exactly behave menu wise with
5.02+..
Dave Lyons The Finder and DIcEd do not impose any special limits on the
number of icons
Dave Lyons you can have. You can have as many as you can fit in memory.
Dave Lyons The LaserWriter driver was never using ImageWriter emulation--
Dave Lyons ImageWriter emulation is still *available* for
Dave Lyons use by applications that only know how to shove text out to a slot
(for example, most ProDOS 8
Dave Lyons applications). The Print Manager driver for the LaserWriter is
actually sending PostScript(tm)
Dave Lyons stuff out to the LW in response to QuickDraw commands.
Dave Lyons (done)
AFL Dyfet Dave, seems you didn't leave anything for Matt :)
ShrinkIt unless someone at apple pays me a ton-o-bucks (not likely), there
is not much possibility that there
ShrinkIt will be a shrinkit toolset (and I don't think they want one,
either)
AFL Dyfet GA GSP1...
GSP1 I wonder if the problem with the PRODOS 16 version of AOL software
and...
GSP1 GS/OS 5.03 will solve the download lockup that accurred in 5.02?
Matt DTS Under 5.0.3, if you're using a serial CARD (NOT the built-in port)
and you get more than 65,535
Matt DTS unclaimed interrupts, the system will put up an alert that says
"Gee, that's a lot of unclaimed
Matt DTS interrupts. Better see a dealer." (or something like that). If
you press return, you're returned
Matt DTS to your application.
Matt DTS However, while the alert is up interrupts are disabled, so if
you're in a download you'll lose
Matt DTS characters and possibly have to start over, depending on how long
you leave the alert up (and
Matt DTS the retries, etc.) Fortunately, you only get the alert once.
We're thinking that in the future we'll
Matt DTS just eliminate it altogether. <GA>
AFL Dyfet Which means you have to watch your system....
GSP1 I've got a Datalink card which emulates a serial card.
AFL Dyfet GA Tap...
AFC TAP I've gotten that error with the internal port
AFC TAP using both a ramfast and a HS SCSI together with AOL...
AFC TAP <done>
AFL Dyfet Okay, GA Ace...
DangardAce Um, uhm, uhh
DangardAce Has the duplicate filename bug been fixed? The one where you
can't replace
DangardAce file with a new one with the same name if you run P8?
AFA Gary J The infamous "save as.." bug.
AFL Dyfet GA Andy...
ShrinkIt (This is Dave L--my session froze.) Yes, the
ShrinkIt problem where Standard File wouldn't give you a "Do you want to
replace this file?" dialog was
ShrinkIt fixed. It was actually the Resource Manager not restarting
properly on return from ProDOS 8 (the
ShrinkIt dialog message was stored in Sys.Resources). done
AFL Dyfet Oh, Matt, out of curiosity, what are dealers supposed to tell
someone if they
AFL Dyfet get a person comming in who says they had the 65k unclaimed
message?? :)
AFA Gary J I can tell you what they WILL say, Dave :)
AFL Dyfet :)
DangardAce Also, it was stated that ROM 03 machines are
DangardAce supposed to be 10% faster than the ROM 01.. is this true for
everything, or
DangardAce just for stuff that makes toolbox calls (this was asked on the
boards but
DangardAce I'd thought I'd get the official word :))
AFA Gary J My guess on that question would be only stuff that uses ROM
routines.
AFL Dyfet GA Dave....
ShrinkIt (Dave L again) I don't have any definite numbers, but
ShrinkIt the speedup there is just from running stuff from ROM instead of
RAM. Much more of
ShrinkIt QuickDraw in in ROM on ROM 3, so there is some speed improvement
there. UP TO 10%; I don't know
ShrinkIt what a typical value is. done
DangardAce Is there any truth to a rumor someone mentioned that the ROM 03
has hidden
DangardAce caches and registers that 5.03 takes advantage of..
ShrinkIt How can a ROM have a cache??
AFL Dyfet As much truth probably as to the rumor that if you hold down the
OA-ctrl-shft-
AFL Dyfet opt-apple keys, you will get a message backwards from the Blue
Temple :)
AFL Marty LOL
AFA Gary J Another Rumor: If you do an ASCII dump of the ROM 03 battery
RAM, it says
AFA Gary J "Woz is the Walrus" backwards.
AFL Scott I thought it was "I buried Steve" :)
A2GS Wasn't it "Apple II Forever or till the Next Mac" ?
AFA Gary J Scott, that's what you get if you play the digitized "Apple II"
sound backward.
AFL Scott ROTFL!:)
ShrinkIt Dave just left my cube...
DangardAce I meant registers and softswitches not found in ROM 01
DangardAce Sheesh. :)
AFL Dyfet Okay Ace...Clearification is reasonable :)
ShrinkIt We are not aware of anything "special" in the ROM 03 machine's ROM
that the general programming public
ShrinkIt isn't aware of (andy).
AFA Gary J I have a question....(not related to 5.0.3)
AFA Gary J I've had problems of not being able to enter the control panel
after quitting
AFA Gary J certain IIGS desktop programs. One of the programs is ShrinkIt
GS. The
AFA Gary J problem may be something specific to my machine, but I can't seem
to track it
AFA Gary J down.
AFA Gary J (I can get into the control panel after busting into GSBug)
AFA Gary J GA, Andy
ShrinkIt (DAL again) I don't know how it could affect
ShrinkIt ShrinkIt GS, but there -was- a bug fix to SetGrafProcs for 5.0.3,
where it was leaving
ShrinkIt the Busy flag incremented by one. This prevents you from getting
into the CDA menu if the
ShrinkIt Event Manager is off. The only place you're likely to encounter
SetGrafProcs getting called is doing
ShrinkIt Draft mode printing with the ImageWriter driver.
AFA Gary J This has happened to me in 5.0.2 AND 5.0.3.
ShrinkIt Gary, does it stop you from getting into CDAs all the time, or
only from programs that don't
ShrinkIt use the Event Manager?
AFA Gary J Only FROM programs that use Event Manager? I haven't tried to
tie it to
AFA Gary J Event Manager/No Event Manager programs. Just seems to be
certain desktop type
AFA Gary J programs (i.e. America Online GS has no problem).
ShrinkIt Well, after you quit ShrinkIt GS and can't get to the CP, what
program are you in? Finder? ProSel?
AFA Gary J Oh, no, I'm using Squirt-16. That may have something to do with
it :)
AFA Gary J It's text based, no event manager.
ShrinkIt That's what I mean--yeah, if you can't
ShrinkIt get to CDAs from a program that -doesn't- use the EM, that means
the Busy flag got incremented
ShrinkIt accidentally. ga
AFL Dyfet GA Matt...
Matt DTS Try allocating some DP space and using Nifty List to start up the
event manager. You likely won't be
Matt DTS able to get Squirt to recognize many keystrokes, but if you can
get into the CDA menu it's a really
Matt DTS good indication that somebody is incrementing the busy flag and
leaving it set. (You can also check
Matt DTS it out from GSBug - it's been in business at $E100FF for four
years and going strong) <GA>
ShrinkIt (Matt, starting up the EM isn't actually enough--somebody then has
to call GetNextEvent or
ShrinkIt EventAvail. --DAL)
AFA Gary J I understand now. But Matt, if I can get into the CDA menu to
use Nifty-List
AFA Gary J to start the event manager, then I wouldn't need to start the
event manager :)
AFL Dyfet :)
ShrinkIt (DAL: You could drop into GSBug and type E1/FF: to see what the
busy flag is, then E1/FF:0 and
ShrinkIt you can get into NL, etc. Whee.)
AFA Gary J GSBug get's me in, once I get into GSBug, I can get into the CDA
menu all the
AFA Gary J time after that.
Matt DTS You can also write a little program that does nothing but call
GetNextEvent until you get a "Q"
Matt DTS key-down event and see if you can get into the CDA menu there,
etc., etc. There's lots you can play
Matt DTS with.
AFA Gary J Ok. I'll check that, Dave. (I'm interested to see if that's
what's causing
AFA Gary J it)
AFA Gary J Dave, did you say that CDA menu problem I'm having should have
been fixed with
AFA Gary J 5.0.3? (Info scolled off screen :(
AFA Gary J (if it is indeed being caused by the incrementing of the busy
flag, that is)
Matt DTS Dave sez:
Matt DTS "Only if it's being caused by SetGrafProcs incrementing the busy
flag." (If not, we'll have to
Matt DTS figure out what's incrementing your busy flag.)
AFA Gary J Ok. (Just wanted to confirm that SetGrafProcs was fixed in
5.0.3)
AFA Gary J Thanks.
Matt DTS Yes, SetGrafProcs no longer increments the busy flag
one-sidedly.
AFA Gary J Thanks, Matt/Dave.
AFL Dyfet Okay, do we have anything else for tonight?
ShanoJ Matt, Dave, question:
ShanoJ Are there any known problems with the RunQ and AppleTalk? Twilight
uses the
ShanoJ RunQ, and if AppleTalk is active, it seems that it's task is never
called, but
ShanoJ as soon as appleTalk is deactivated, everything is cool again...
This is all
ShanoJ on the same system, same system disk, etc.... I haven't been able
to do any
ShanoJ tests as I don't HAVE an AppleTalk setup, but this is what my beta
testers are
ShanoJ telling me...
ShanoJ I even checked my tech notes and didn't find anything... :)
ShrinkIt (DAL again) ShanoJ, no I don't know of any problems with the Run
Queue and AppleTalk.
ShrinkIt Why don't you use the Installer to install AppleShare and see if
you have the problem? It
ShrinkIt shouldn't matter if there's really a network connected or not.
ShanoJ Hmm... Will that work? I'll have to try it... Thanks!
ShanoJ Can I ask a ORCA/C question?
AFA Gary J Why not?
ShanoJ Okay, I have a program that has the following two lines:
ShanoJ (err, make that three...)
ShanoJ #define WIDTH 320
ShanoJ #define HEIGHT 200
ShanoJ int screen[WIDTH][HEIGHT];
ShanoJ And it gets compiler errors at the first [ on the third line...
What am I doing
ShanoJ wrong? That's legal, isn't it?
ShrinkIt What's the error message? (DAL)
ShanoJ (oh ya, forgot the ';'s on the first two lines...)
ShrinkIt NO! Preprocessor directives don't need semicolons.
ShanoJ Something like 'expected ]' or some such...
ShrinkIt If you #define WIDTH 320; then every time WIDTH occurs in your
code it will be replaced by "320;".
ShanoJ Heh.... Thanks Dave... I'll go bash my head against the wall
now.... :(
ShanoJ I KNEW that.... Oh well, I guess if we could all program well, no
one would
ShanoJ pay us...
ShrinkIt (DAL) Great, you had me really confused. Yeah, you forgot to
*omit* the semicolons in the source; tha
ShrinkIt that expalins it.
ShanoJ Then again, come to think of it, no one DOES pay me... :)
ShanoJ Wish that meant I didn't have any bugs.... :)
A2GS Write it in Pascal....where you MUST have ";"
A2GS :)
ShanoJ Ya, I've been using Pascal a lot lately, which is probably why I
did that...
ShrinkIt (Except when you have to *not* have ";" in Pascal, like before an
ELSE. In Pascal ";" separates
ShrinkIt statements, and in C it terminates them.)
ShanoJ Ya, I think on my tombstone it'll say killed by a ";"... :( I
always put a ;
ShanoJ before an ELSE, except usally I hit the "'" or "L" key
instead....
