werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) (07/11/88)
[ Follow-ups to this article will go to comp.sys.mac ONLY, by default ] so I spend Sunday afternoon polishing my Mac-interface; I try to set things up so that when the Mac boots, it gives me a choice to either run Finder or MultiFinder in the "most convenient way" .... I try to use "ToMultiFinder-1.1" as StartUp-application..... ... uh, wait, if it is not in the "blessed folder", it can't find Finder and MultiFinder (at least, I could not get it to do it by specifying a path; could be my fault) Anyway, I put "ToMultiFinder-1.1" in my "blessed folder" and try to make it the StartUp-application again .... .... can't do that! the name of the Application is "too long" (I am told)!! well, shorten the name to "ToMF" - now it's acceptable! (I wonder what would happen if I had buried my blessed folder deeper in the folder-hierarchy. I suspect that it would be possible that the names of all the folders in the path could add up to be too long to have something as the startup-application that has a name only 1-character long ....!! but I don't care to confirm that (today, anyway) .... So, I boot again, tell ToMultiFinder to give me the MultiFinder .... .... eeek, the Applications (VersaTerm-3.1, QUED/M) can't start up: they can't find one or the other of the files they seem to need to find!!! Ah, yes, I have changed names of some folders in the hierarchy-organization. I bet that MultiFinder (or is it the application?) are looking in a non-existing path ... Now, let's see, how does MultiFinder know what applications to bring up??!! Looking in the "blessed-folder" doesn't show a file with a name like "MultiFinder Startup" .... hmmm.... it wouldn't be using the file "Finder Startup" now, or would it? that wouldn't be right ...... ..ok, let's remove "Finder Startup" from the "blessed folder" and try again. - yep, MultiFinder comes up - all by itself; that was it! Now, let's see, how do I tell MultiFinder about a Startup-Set? Let's look at "About MultiFinder" .... Geee, that isn't any help!!! (remember how nice Switcher and Juggler was in such things?) ...well, I guess, the only way I know that it can be done is to bring up all the applications I want to run under MultiFinder and then making MultiFinder the StartUp application! that seems to write a file "Finder Startup" into the blessed folder (which we now know seems to be the place that such things are remembered in) done and tested - that's ONE-WAY, at least, it can be done. gee, I hope there is a friendlier way to do that: what's wrong with having an ASCII-text file "MultiFinder Startup" which one can edit? or a little utility with a File-Selection Dialogue-window which you use to select all the stuff you want to run at MultiFinder Startup ...? and making multiple sets for different purposes would be so much easier too ... oh, do I hope there is an easier way .... would it be time to buy a manual, maybe for the latest OS-Release? Maybe they actually expect me to read manuals now??? Nooooo, can't be .... the Macintosh interface is for the "rest of them" and thus designed to be intuitive. Besides, with near 20-years of computer experience, and 4 on the Macintosh, I'd be able to figure this out without consulting "paper" (yech), wouldn't I??!! Hmmmm, there most be some bozos hidden among the people working on the user-interface at Apple ... (Is Bozo-the-Clown still around?!? :-) Now, let's take a look at the "About the Finder" window to see how the memory was allocated. In which order are the applications grabbing their memory space..?!? Could be important to influence that in order to be able to free a continguous large block of memory when I need (god-forbid) to use HyperCard, or a similar monster .... ...hmm, the order the applications running under MultiFinder are displayed doesn't reflect the order in which I started them. I wonder if one can influence the memory allocation at all, or if the display reflects the order in which memory was allocated...or if there is a chance in hell to control this aspect of memory allocation in the first place ....oh, well. now, this is strange: this About MF-window keeps blinking about every second? is there a background job running trying to update every so often? ... now it stopped doing that again....strange ... no, something is running in the background, even when the About-window is NOT open .... I can tell by the way Pyro is shooting off fire-works very slowly when idling, even when under the Finder only!!! hmmm, and every once in a while, Pyro switches from the fireworks to a different display: an octagon (delimited by 8 corner-points saying Pyro! (version 3.0b10, if you have to know; yeah, I know, beta ....soo?) well, isn't that the way Pyro now indicates that there are background things going on?! like downloads?! but I am not running anything in the background (he says, knowing darn well that SOMETHING is running ...) I would suspect VersaTerm had I not seen this behavior on a plain Finder-DeskTop.... makes me suspect an INIT !!! now what do we have in the blessed folder, let's see now: We are running standard OS-Release 6.0 (F-6.1/S-6.0) with additional INITs " Vaccine 1.0", Background (to put the Andromeda Galaxy Desktop-cover up), there is MacsBug-6.0b1, of course (gee, I have to get around to explore that one some more soon...), there is PopIt-1.72, Pyro-3.0b10, RESOURCEPATCH.INIT (from SideKick 2.0), SuitCase-1.3, VirusWarningINIT (thanks, Chris), and zApplicationMenu 2.0 .....which ones shall we suspect to show these sudden "spurts of activiy"??!! ... ahhh, life in the fast lane !!! but back to MultiFinder, where we want to figure out how memory is juggled... well, the window "About the Macintosh Finder" shows us what applications are running under MultiFinder, the total memory they grabbed hold off (but no exact number of how much is used/free; that little bar gives a "rough" idea - no more!), tells us the Largest-Unused-Block of Memory (but not the total free ...how about showing used and total memory allocated to an application??!!) ....which is of dubious use, anyway, because often one tries to bring up another application with a memory requirement not much smaller than Largest-Available-Block: Kaboom!! Fireworks - and not the Pyro-variety either!! ahh, the art of memory management ...((-: and how nice it would be to have the right kind of hardware support!! (did I mention I am running a 2.5Meg Mac+?) Gee, if anyone cares to speculate along with me about these things, we could have fun sharing insights, speculate, bad-mouth Apple-people ....(-: all in good fun. even if some grains of solid, technical information would make through the filters .... Hope it rained where you are, too ... Cheers, ---Werner -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ send Email to: werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Internet: 128.83.144.1) .....!ut-sally!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner should RASCAL be ill: werner@astro.as.utexas.edu or werner@utastro.UUCP)