alexis@dasys1.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (09/20/88)
No, my Mac didn't actually bite a dog. But even so, this is probably the
strangest thing I've ever see a Mac do. If any of you have any idea what might
have happended, I'd love to know. A freind of mine came in from Israel with the
latest Israeli system software. It's a fairly standard system- finder 5.5 with
system 4.1.1 (which I have never heard of, but I would guess is like 4.1, but
localized in some fashion). I have never seen a Mac doing non-Roman languages
before and I was really impressed. My reading knowledge of hebrew is fairly
non-existant, but just remembering the menu positions in the Finder was
sufficient to get around.
Minor Weirdness #1:
I had a great deal of difficulty making his system the startup system on my
hard disk. I copied it over, removed the finder from MY s.f., removed both the
finder and system from his s.f. and then put them right back. This should have
made his s.f. the blessed folder, but it didn't. I had to remove both the
finder and System from mine, then it worked.
Minor Weirdness #2:
While trying to switch systems, I tried to cross boot to his s.f., and even
though his finder was an earlier version than mine, it successfully switched.
Major Weirdness #1:
Even though this switch seemed to be successful (it cleared the screen, put the
program name ["Finder"] in the menu bar, accessed the disk, redrew the
desktop), I was STILL IN FINDER 6.0! That was MY finder, the one already
running! How could that be?
Ultra-Wierdness:
After I got his s.f. to be the blessed folder I rebooted. Remember, his system
is 4.1.1, and multifinder doesn't yet work with the Hebrew System. So the Mac
starts up, and it show the Hebrew version of "Welcome To Macintosh." At this
point, I'm clearly in his system. What's more, I'm just as clearly NOT in my
system folder because none of my INITs loaded. Then his Finder comes up. It
works fine. In fact everything is working fine, INCLUDING MULTI-FINDER WHICH
ISN'T EVEN IN HIS SYSTEM FOLDER!!! And although it WAS running multifinder,
the ONLY copy of which was in my original s.f., it DID NOT HAVE DA HANDLER
AVAILABLE so I couldn't use DAs. Even granting that it found the multifinder
file, why then didn't it find DA Handler???
It's actually amusing to watch a pre-6.0 Finder deal with multifinder. It seems
to work fine. The only problem is that it doesn't understand its environment
and somehow the cliprect (I think) of the desktop gets messed up by any
application which opens windows. So when you switch back to the finder, your
windows work, but any icons on the desktop may disappear.
It's also sad to see how many applications come so close to being compatible
with non-roman systems, only to fail by a hair. Excel, Word, many others- their
only failing (on cursory inspection) is that they can't seem to deal with the
spacing of non-roman characters. They work fine with the hebrew system. Excel
(and FoxBase, too) both use the international sorting conventions in the system
file, apparently (although it's also possible that they are just using ASCII
values, and the ascii values happen to order properly-- I'll try to check that
sometime).
Major Weirdness #2:
When I got rid of his s.f. and made mine the blessed folder again, the Mac
crashed on every re-boot. After some work I discovered that Vaccine 1.0 and On
Cue 1.0b5 would both crash the system. Neither of those INITs is faulty, and I
replaced them just to be sure. Now On Cue works again, but Vaccine is still
dead. Thus it seems to me that On Cue must have been altered some way, since
the fresh copy works, and the System File was also altered since Vaccine still
dies. The question is how? I never touched any of those files- just moved the
System File in and out of its folder a few times.
For what it's worth, I'm running s4.2 f6.0 on a Mac II w/4 MB RAM, 80 MB
Quantum HD from CMS. MultiFinder always in use, EXCEPT when I'm trying to
switch systems as I was. Lots of INITs but none of them had anything to do with
tonight's happenings, because they were deactivated the whole time.
Any ideas???
----
Alexis Rosen {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Writing from {harpo,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!alexis
The Big Electric Cat {portal,well,sun}!hoptoad/
Public UNIX Best path: uunet!dasys1!alexisduggie@Jessica.stanford.edu (Doug Felt) (09/22/88)
Alexis Rosen writes about using the Hebrew system on a Macintosh. I have experienced the same interesting quirks using Chinese, and have some work arounds, I think. To change systems (both on my hard disk) I do this: 1) put the current finder into a different folder from the system (I have a folder called 'hide finder' in the system folder for this purpose). 2) remove the target finder from its 'hide finder' folder in its system folder. 3) reboot 4) if multifinder is running with the script manager system, choose set startup to set back to finder only, and reboot again. This always seems to work. Like Alexis, I noticed that English finders work with foreign systems, only foreign-language file names are garbage in the finder windows. So in the folder that contains the script manager system, I have two finders in my 'hide finder' folder, one the standard English finder and the other the script finder (Chinese, in my case). I just pull out the one I want to use. I have problems both with quickergraf 1.1 (I am using the 5.0 system until a new 6.something comes out) and Appleshare, so don't use them with the script manager systems. Aren't foreign scripts great? Apple did an incredible job, now if they would only let people in the U.S. get them, and convince application writers to go the extra distance to support them! Doug Felt Courseware Authoring Tools Project Sweet Hall 3rd Floor Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 duggie@jessica.stanford.edu