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From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Hey Apple Mac engineers, answer->Ma
Message-ID: <46100321@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 89 17:28:00 GMT
References: <14845@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Lines: 33
Nf-ID: #R:dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU:14845:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:46100321:000:1621
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Aug 11 12:28:00 1989


>In article <21857@dcatla.UUCP> mclek@sunb.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar) writes:
...
>>I don't know about PM, but I use Macs and Amigas both quite a bit.  I can
>>tell the difference (I'm a tech writer, not a programmer):
>>
>>	- The Mac dialog boxes lock out *all* user input to tasks or windows
>>	  other than the dialog box itself.  What if I want to pull up the
>>	  on-line documentation to help me decide what to set in the dialog?
>>	  This is a BIG malfeature of Multifinder.

>     This not a fault of the Mac, but of the programmer who programmed
>the dialog.  Mac dialogs can be set up to be totally modal, as you
>describe, or to be modeless, i.e. just like any other window.  It is
>more work for the programmer to write programs which use modeless
>dialogs, not much more work, but a little more.  It is modal dialogs,
>not dialogs per se, which lock you out under MultiFinder, and 99% of
>the time, you have some lazy application programmer to thank for it.

It is a fault of the operating system. In a true multitasking 
system, it is IMPOSSIBLE for one program to lock up the system,
whether intentionally or because of a bug.

Incidentally, I was using a Mac recently do some scanning (soon
to appear as a lovely posting in sci.astro (advertisement)). It
was running multifinder. The watch icon kept appearing and 
there was no way to stop it except the power switch.  
Is there a generic way on a Mac II running Multifinder to stop a
program or switch programs while the watch icon is present? This
is an ABSOLUTE requirement of a multitasking system. My PC
under Desqview can easily do it. 

Doug McDonald