Re: Coop. vs preemptive multitasking

[dirk@GAGA.MASCHINENBAU.UNI-DORTMUND.DE]

To Richard Sherman:

It's really easy to write programs for the Mac that 
support background applications. You just have to call 
WaitNextEvent in your event loop or SystemTask during long 
tasks.
But it's not so easy to write a program that can work in 
the background. When programming a time-consuming loop, 
you can't do it with "for i:=1 to n do" or alike, instead 
you have to watch the time you need, remember your counter 
and return control to the system when your time is gone.
It isn't (a lot of) fun to change a tested program to 
support cooperative multitasking.
With preemptive multitasking you don't have to worry about 
that and you could even write short and simple programs 
that do what they are supposed to, even in the background.
Not every program needs a desktop interface and the 
Macintosh Toolbox.
So better buy a GS and GNO!

Dirk

|Dirk Froehling - dirk@gaga.maschinenbau.uni-dortmund.de|
|Uni Dortmund, FB Maschinenbau, LS Mechanik             |
|"GS is not dead, it just smells funny!" - FZ modified  |

QUIT
lls funny!" - FZ modified  |