gwe@cbdkc1.UUCP ( George Erhart x4021 CB 3D288 WDS ) (12/19/85)
[ for your enjoyment! ]
These are two news articles that I pulled from the Berkeley Mac Users Group
BBS for your reading pleasure ... they are original from the MacQueue BBS
as the message indicates. I will be real happy if the prices and improvements
listed here are for real!
-------------------------
George Erhart at AT&T Bell Laboratories Columbus, Ohio
614-860-4021 {ihnp4,cbosgd}!cbdkc1!gwe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Category: 1 Rumors (moderated by OLIVERWENDELL JONESIII)
Message #: 322
Submitted: 12/16/85 23:03
Submitted by: TIM BRACE
Subject: MacPlus Info
(relayed from MacQueue BBS--661-7374, with permission)
MacPlus
By Alt-Sysop Steve Maller
I recently got a look at Apple's Tech Note Z-1. This is a confidential
technical note covering the new ROMs. Unfortunately, I was not able to
persuade the loyal developer (who is the owner of said Tech Note) to allow me
to photocopy it for myself. Therefore, what follows is my best recollection
of the details of the Tech Note:
First, a few hardware changes:
- 800K internal floppy with internal speed control (up to 200% improvement in
performance!)
- SCSI interface port
- New keyboard with built-in 10-key pad
- 1 megabyte (1024K) socketed RAM expandable to four megs with the new 1
megabit RAMs (when they're available)
- 128K of ROM (up from the current 64K)
- the rest seems to have stayed the same (including the 7.8 mhz 68000 and
screen handling)
However, the exciting stuff is what is in the ROMs. The Tech Note covers the
changes in the ROM on a Manager-by-Manager basis. Remember, this is a thumb-
nail sketch of what I saw.
Resource Manager
Mostly speed increases and similar optimizations here. Some interesting new
features including more intelligent and much faster resource file compacting.
The new manager reads resources into RAM (I think) when they are to be
re-written to speed the shuffling of resource maps and such. Also, the
Resource Manager now does high-speed reads when launching an application for
all the 'preload' resources in that app's file. This will drastically speed up
launching of an
application.
Quickdraw
Some neat stuff here! Atkinson has been real generous with his wisdom, and
included a lot of MacPaint's more spectacular items in the new ROM's.
You can now do a 'seed fill'; this is best described as what happens when you
use the Paint bucket in MacPaint. You can also do lasso simulations with
another new Quickdraw ROM call. But, the most spectacular changes to
Quickdraw are in the area of speed. That "...hand optomized assembly language"
that was one of the selling points of Quickdraw was apparently not quite as
optomized as one might have thought!
A list of speed improvements is quite impressive. DrawText was sped up by 50%;
CopyBits was improved by anywhere from 60-400% depending on the scaling
involved; vertical and diagonal LineTo drawing sped up by over 100%, and more
that I can't remember. This all has interesting ramifications...
Font Manager
Andy Hertzfeld has written the new Font Manager. (An interesting bit of
trivia is in order here. Andy has apparently written four or five of these
critters, of which this one was chosen for it's superiority. Only a real nerd
can get off on writing Font Managers enough to write four or five of 'em!)
In general, most of the improvements are performance related. There can now be
32,000 fonts, not the previous limit of 512.
SCI Manager
There are a number of new ROM calls to support the new port. I guess they are
the standard low-level stuff like _Read, _Write, _Control, etc.
Window Manager
Here, you are given the routine that zooms a window out to cover the screen. I
believe this will be covered in the window's title bar by a new little icon or
something in the default Window defProc.
TextEdit
The default clikLoop now covers the problem of a user scrolling the selection
off the screen by scrolling the text in the direction of the dragging mouse.
Also, fractional spacing is now allowed, to better facilitate the LaserWriter's
extra capabilities.
File Manager
The most obvious difference here is HFS. Remember, there is now a path
possible which might be quite complex. Most applications' habits are quite
nasty here, and many blow up under HFS for this reason. For example, Bill
Duvall's EDIT refers to a file called FILE on a disk called
DISK as "DISK:FILE". Supreme no-no now. It is important to use the vRefNum
returned by the SFPackage...
A lot of system resources like MDEF's, WDEF's, CDEF's, Chicago12 font, DRVR's
have been built in to the ROMs. This should also speed things up
significantly.
That's all I can remember. The new ROMs will answer a lot of criticism about
speed problems with the Mac, and make that adventure known as "...programming
the Macintosh" even more interesting and challenging than it ever was.
I'm excited. Are you?
12/16/85 The Mac Plus Facts
We've learned that several weeks ago Apple held a meeting for the press
and dealers in which they announced tentative pricing as follows:
Mac Plus - $2700
68000 CPU, 1 meg socketed RAM, SCSI Port, New keyboard, New ROMS, 800K drive
800K Drive & ROM upgrade - $300
The new drive will not only be twice as big, but also twice as fast!
System Board Swap - $600 for 512K boards,
- $800 for 128k or third party upgraded boards
The System Board Swap does not include the new internal drives.
The public announcement will be made just before the MacWorld Expo (1/15).
Wow.
Alt-Sysop Steve Maller
Category: 1 Rumors (moderated by OLIVERWENDELL JONESIII)
Message #: 323
Submitted: 12/16/85 23:10
Submitted by: TIM BRACE
Subject: MultiMac
(relayed from MacQueue BBS--661-7374, with permission)
MultiMac
by Leo Laporte, Sysop
#202 6 15 Dec 85 13:54:38
From: Sysop
To: All
Subj: MultiMac
I've picked up some info about MultiMac.
For those of you who don't know - MultiMac is a multi-tasking shell that works
like Switcher. Unlike Switcher, however, MultiMac allows multiple programs to
be working at the same time. Clicking on the window of a program will make
its menu bar active. Any processing the program is doing continues even if
its menu bar isn't active.
The latest version is 2.8. It is not, howver, public domain. Nor is it
available for downloading. I had inadvertently posted it for a few hours, but
it's no longer on the board. The version I saw was written in 4th(!) and
worked well, although it was very fussy about its environment.
According to the rumor mill, it will be out soon, from a Canadian company,
for around $40. This will be the one program everyone who uses a Mac will
have to have! Keep your eyes peeled.
--
George Erhart at AT&T Bell Laboratories Columbus, Ohio
614-860-4021 {ihnp4,cbosgd}!cbdkc1!gweguido@boring.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) (12/23/85)
Thanks to George Erhart for posting these details about the new ROM. There were some details that bothered me, though: >You can now do a 'seed fill'; this is best described as what happens when you >use the Paint bucket in MacPaint. You can also do lasso simulations with >another new Quickdraw ROM call. > >There can now be 32,000 fonts, not the previous limit of 512. These and other "useful additions" to the ROM can be seen as attempts from Apple to outdate old Macs. Soon, most marketed applications will use the new features, and thus the owners of old Macs have the choice: upgrade or stick to the old software. As the owner of a new Mac, I don't feel very comfortable with this... -- Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam (guido@mcvax.UUCP)
shebanow@ernie.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Shebanow) (12/24/85)
(Beware of the line eater) I think you may be worrying unnecesarrily. Apple isn't requiring anyone to upgrade to the 1 Meg Mac described in the last rumor. The rumors that I have heard say that Apple will also offer a minimal ROM/Disk Drive upgrade to existing Macs for approx $300 (This is for internal drive only). Since this minimal upgrade will supposedly speed up your 512K Mac by 50% (and double your disk capacity) it is still a perfectly reasonable upgrade approach. At the very least, it is essential that everyone get the ROM upgrade, since not getting the new ROM will get the Mac into the same situation as the IBM PC (there are still lots of programs out there which don't understand directories or other PCDOS 2.xx & 3.xx features). Just remember that even ROM based operating systems have to be upgraded sometime. Still, it would be nice if Apple made a $50 ROM-only upgrade available for those who cannot afford the disk upgrades. Andrew Shebanow shebanow@ucbernie
tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) (12/25/85)
In article <1256@cbdkc1.UUCP> gwe@cbdkc1.UUCP ( George Erhart x4021 CB 3D288 WDS ) writes: > > Font Manager > > Andy Hertzfeld has written the new Font Manager. (An interesting > bit of trivia is in order here. Andy has apparently written four > or five of these critters, of which this one was chosen for it's > superiority. Only a real nerd can get off on writing Font > Managers enough to write four or five of 'em!) In general, most > of the improvements are performance related. There can now be > 32,000 fonts, not the previous limit of 512. This stuff was also on Compuserve, where the "real nerd" himself saw it, and responded. Here is his response: ------------------------- Begin Inserted Text ----------------------- Sb: #4967-#Mac+ Rumours Fm: Andy Hertzfeld 70167,3430 I didn't really want to keep rewriting the font manager, but you have to remember that the Mac system has been evolving for more than five years now, and when you change one part of the system it often affects other parts. The first two font managers kept fonts in their own separate files. The third one made the major step of using the resource manager (around Fall 1982), the fourth one separated font family from size and used scaling (written in Jan 1983, it's the one in the old ROM). Even though I had left Apple, I wrote the new one in the new ROM because I wanted a chance to fix some design mistakes in the earlier one. The new one allows 65535 font families instead of 512, pre-stylized fonts and support for fractional pixel widths. By the way, many of the QuickDraw speed improvements came from unwinding loops because more space was available in the ROM, although some were due to improved coding (like Ovals) -- Andy ------------------------- End Inserted Text ------------------------- -- Tim Smith sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim || ima!ism780!tim || ihnp4!cithep!tim
chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/26/85)
> Jan 1983, it's the one in the old ROM). Even though I had left > Apple, I wrote the new one in the new ROM because I wanted a > chance to fix some design mistakes in the earlier one. The new > one allows 65535 font families instead of 512, pre-stylized fonts > and support for fractional pixel widths. Sounds great. One thing I've been thinking of recently is a new font 'style' similar to bold or italic -- strikeout. Many systems allow you to strikeout a character (equivalent to <char> <backspace> "-", and it would be quite simple to implement at the font manager level. I'm currently doing some editing of another person's document and that would be quite handy as a way of showing changes. -- :From catacombs of Castle Tarot: Chuq Von Rospach sun!chuq@decwrl.DEC.COM {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc,pyramid}!sun!chuq It's not looking, its heat seeking.
jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler) (01/06/86)
In article <6713@boring.UUCP> guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) writes: >Thanks to George Erhart for posting these details about the new ROM. > >These and other "useful additions" to the ROM can be seen as attempts from >Apple to outdate old Macs. Soon, most marketed applications will use the >new features, and thus the owners of old Macs have the choice: upgrade or >stick to the old software. As the owner of a new Mac, I don't feel very >comfortable with this... Then you could also look upon them as attempts from Apple to make their product better. If they don't improve the Macintosh someone will bring out a better 'Banana 6000' and most marketed applications will use the new features, and thus the owners of Macs will have the choice: buy the 'Bananna 6000' or stick to the old software. -- Jim Budler cro Devices, Inc. (408) 749-5806 Usenet: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amdcad!jimb Compuserve: 72415,1200
gus@Shasta.ARPA (01/08/86)
> Sounds great. One thing I've been thinking of recently is a new font 'style' > similar to bold or italic -- strikeout. Many systems allow you to strikeout a > character (equivalent to <char> <backspace> "-", and it would be quite simple > to implement at the font manager level. I'm currently doing some editing of > another person's document and that would be quite handy as a way of showing > changes. > Actually, this seems like a simple feature to be added to a next generation word processor perhaps at the core-edit level, sort of like Microsoft implemented Small caps in Word even though that is not a directly supported quickdraw mode.