Peck@RADC-MULTICS.ARPA.UUCP (05/22/87)
Ok, so there's an Alcyon 4.14, and some gemlib updates. I never heard
about them. I don't see why I should have to spend money feeding ComPuserve
to get my software fixed. I've already spent three hundred dollars on this
goofy program.
The thing that really bothers me is the attitude...Don't use system
variables until we document them!! You should bug us to document them.
HA!! If there's one thing Atari is great at, its keeping any and all documentation
a secret from everyone. The hard disk booting is another story.
Personally, I'd be happy if printf worked, and it returned error codes.
--Rodney
Peck@Radc-Multics.Arpamanis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis) (05/23/87)
In article <870522123435.655800@RADC-MULTICS.ARPA> Peck@RADC-MULTICS.ARPA (Rodney) writes: > The thing that really bothers me is the attitude...Don't use system >variables until we document them!! You should bug us to document them. Without getting into yet another pointless discussion on the subject of Atari's attitude, I must say that not using undocumented features is essential to success in programming. Just about every program I've ever written has one or two undocumented things in it; either I couldn't get them to work (and they weren't essential anyway), or they struck me as things I would be likely to change in the next version. Allan is not setting up laws as to what we can and can't do with our machines; in telling you not to use something undocumented, he's advising you that it may not work the same way in the next release. If you ignore his advice, that's fine; but you may have egg on your face when your program won't work on some future machine. I won't argue about the quality of the developers' documentation (the Mark Williams stuff is so good that I no longer feel a need for an Atari product in this area); but it's a good idea to *heed* advice that some location or operation is "RESERVED". Or would you prefer Atari never to improve their products? I can hear it now: "Damn you, Atari, for fixing the 40-folder bug. Now my program doesn't work any more!". ----- Vincent Manis {seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis Dept. of Computer Science manis@cs.ubc.cdn Univ. of British Columbia manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 manis@ubc.csnet (604) 228-6770 or 228-3061 "The difference between capitalism and communism is obvious: under capitalism, man exploits man, while under communism, it is exactly the opposite."