Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: My last comments about ST multitasking Message-ID: <7678@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 89 16:57:43 GMT References: <8908160401.AA01009@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 33 in article <8908160401.AA01009@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, 01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) says: > Look, I can format floppies from within all my ST applications, But you have to either have the Format command available as a desk accessory (don't know if it's possible?), or each individual program must worry about including a disk format option. Certainly if that's important to the market, most will, but it's still something a program's author shouldn't have to worry about -- debugging the real application should occupy all their time. Plus, when I format a floppy, I can click back to my WordProcessor or Terminal or whatever else I have running, while the format takes place. > I can run a word processor, a spreadsheet and a painting program at the same > time and switch between them. But you can't have the word processor ask the data base to find you client files, extract some data, pass it to the spreadsheet, generate a color image, then pass that to the paint program for conversion to black and while, before being inserted into your word processor. You need several programs active for that kind of interaction. > BUT, when I want to crank out dbMAN reports from my databases (one is > almost 4 megabytes), I don't want to slow down my 68000 by using another > application at all. I want the dbMAN stuff out asap. DataBase stuff is often disk intensive. If my DB program is thumbing through 100 megs of database to prepare a report, I'll likely have lots of CPU time left for other stuff. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy Be careful what you wish for -- you just might get it