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From: hutch@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Jim Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: workbench
Message-ID: <2389@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Wed, 24-Dec-86 14:44:40 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.2389
Posted: Wed Dec 24 14:44:40 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Dec-86 21:35:21 EST
References: <1111@spice.cs.cmu.edu> <1394@umd5> <5394@ukma.ms.uky.csnet> <5399@ukma.ms.uky.csnet>
Reply-To: hutch@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Jim Hutchison)
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Organization: UCSD EMU Project (Educational Microcomputer Unix)
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This is a conglomeration of thoughts on the issue of icons for workbench.

If you have them in one file, then when you change the size of, or delete
one, then you have a problem.  Admittedly this can be fixed by dragging the
data up from the end to cover the hole, but that seems rather timely, and
messy.  Icons are changed rarely, so whatever technique is used it can perhaps
be slow in favor of a greater speed in the more general case.

Most of the speed seems to be lost in searching the entire directory for icons.
Some is lost in the multitude of openings which must be done, but it would seem
that searching a directory and sorting out file types is the bigger part.

Perhaps if each directory had a directory called .icons or Icons or whatever
(where are philosophers when you need them? :-), then you could find that
directory (which could be made first, as the method for optimized boot disks.),
and the icons would all be in there.  The check for type could be taken away,
and a pair of processes/tasks could be used to display icons.

Why 2?  One to read them from disk (which would go into disk wait a lot), and
another to display them (and perhaps make sure that they taste like icons.
The second would wait on the first and then the first would wait on disk while
the other one was displaying the icons.  This method might be practical with
the  current icon file scheme, any takers?

As to the notion of waiting, perhaps they would pass messages, perhaps a latch
in a word/byte of memory common to the data space of one of the two.

So the tally is 1 workbench change and 1 icon file change, independent.
-- 
    Jim Hutchison   		UUCP:	{dcdwest,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!hutch
		    		ARPA:	Hutch@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." - "Repo Man"