Re: hard drive indicator lights in menu bar

[fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)]

In article <20agn0$ud@altitude.HIP.CAM.ORG> vandry@CAM.ORG (Phillip Vandry) writes:
>That could really be hell. Your letters will get trashed all the time. Don't
>forget that writing to the screen is writing. It could scroll your letters
>off, overwrite them... The letters will always be displayed! (Somebody is
>always reading or writing!).

If the letter appears in the upper right corner, scrolling is a non-issue.
You're right though... writing to the console driver would look ugly.  You
could either watch the Opens and keep track of the refNums (pretty trivial)
or use GetRefInfo (I think).  It's a bit more bookkeeping, but not a big
deal.

>You would have to check that the read/write is really happening on a block
>device. Then, you would have to worry about GNO. (I think GNO is important!)
>A process switch could occur while a little letter is displayed.

Process switches don't occur in the middle of GS/OS calls, which is
essentially what this would be.  Also, GNO won't switch if you raise the
busy flag.

-- 
fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]