drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen) (10/04/89)
mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Michael McClennen) writes: >In particular, the file manager chapter in volume II is worthless >and should be torn out of the book. It documents the original flat Macintosh >File System. All of the original macintoshes that used that system either have >been or should be upgraded or thrown on the junkheap. The current file i/o >system is documented in Inside Macintosh volume IV. In fact, volume IV was >written for the Macintosh Plus in particular. Volume V covers both the SE and >the II, so you don't need it if you are sure that your software is never going >to run on either of those machines. Volume III is indeed of not very much use, >but if you're going to buy I and II (which you still need, since many of the >basic managers (window, menu, quickdraw, etc.) are documented there and nowhere >else, and haven't changed much) you might as well buy that one too. A lot of the things we take for granted, even on the Plus, like hierarchical/ popup menus and styled TE are System patches and appeared with the SE/II and are documented in Volume V. The thing that is really "worse" about the situation is how much more complicated the Inside Mac mess is going to be with the release of System 7.0. >To summarize, you need to buy I-IV, and probably V as well. >In addition, quite a bit of all five volumes is obsolete, inaccurate, garbled, >or just plain wrong. So you need to get ahold of a complete set of Macintosh >Technical Notes as well. There are 253 of them at last count, and more come >out quarterly, including revisions to old ones. They are sometimes wrong too, >but at least they do get updated once in a while. (Oh, you can order them >from Apple through their developers' organization, called APDA.) They come out bi-monthly (6 sets per year), not quarterly. They are also available via anonymous ftp from info-mac and apple and are posted on services such as America Online (nee AppleLink Personal Edition), CompuServe, GEnie, etc and many technically-oriented BBSes. I believe that organizations such as BCS and BMUG have them in their libraries as well. APDA is, as far as I am concerned, a court of last resort when it comes to Tech Notes. Dennis Cohen Claris Corp. **************************************************** Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_! ****************************************************