Re: HardPressed (was Re: AutoArk)

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

In article <1993Jan16.174907.5943@slate.mines.colorado.edu> gdesroch@slate.mines.colorado.edu (DESROCHERS GARY FREDERIC) writes:
>   As long as it was IIGS specific it wouldn't be that difficult.

Not relevant.

The problem isn't using //gs specific features, it's interfacing with ProDOS 8.
Too many programs use direct block reads and writes, which means that a
compression program would have to figure out whether or not a particular block
being read held a directory entry or compressed file, and deal with it
appropriately.  This would be ugly.

There's more to it than this.  It really isn't pretty.  Easiest solution is to
compress and uncompress the P8 stuff from GS/OS, but then you don't have
transparent access to the files.  You could write a CDA which knows how to
unpack things under P8, but that's just providing another way to unpack it
and repack it after you get back to GS/OS.

Worst of all, P8 doesn't do the nice caching stuff that GS/OS does, so all
of the file creation/deletion/whatever is going to crawl.

It certainly would be nice for AppleWorks (TimeOut HardPressed, anyone?),
but a general P8 solution is hard to do and probably not worth the trouble.

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