george_seto@brains.UUCP (George Seto) (09/02/89)
Re :disassembly of TOS: John Townsend @ Atari writes : >I disagree completely. People should use the documented OS calls. They >shouldn't fumble around inside the Operating System looking for calls and >data structures that weren't intended for their use. You are correct that people shouldn't use the sections that aren't intended for use, but the old Atari company gave us VERY complete documentation of the Operating system along with Memory Maps. This allowed many more people to write proper software for the computer. Yes, the ST is much more complex to program, but it is more difficult to program without adequate information. I wish you would provide the same sort of documentation the old company did. We were able to gain access to things like the Hardware Technical Manuals for 35 or 40 US dollars and other manuals one at a time. These books were obtained without the "non-disclosure" agreement that your "developers packages" requires. Is there any chance the docs that are available in the developer's documentation package would be available in separated manuals? Some programmers need some of these docs, but certainly not all of them. Agreed, others would need all. Can you not be more flexible about these docs? Programmers want to use the documented OS calls, but it makes it much easier if they could get the docs easier. It doesn't matter whether the docs have a disassembly. The various books by Abacus/Becker and Compute! and the Tackle Box makes things much easier, but there are mistakes even there. Love those three books from Compute! in the Technical Reference Guide Series - Atari ST. Really well written, Thanks to Sheldon Leemon. -- -===------===- From George Seto at Cerebral Cortex BBS System -==-==----==-==- (902)462-7245 3/12/2400 8N1 24h/7d -==-------==------ george_seto%brains@iisat.UUCP -==-==----==-==- {uunet, utai, watmath}!dalcs!iisat!brains!george_seto -===------===-