23/02/04 Doug McAdam : >Word is suggested at 9,000 but I set it for 20,000 Min and Preferred.
Unless you have a good reason to do it, it's a bad idea to set identical Min and Preferred sizes. The preferred size is the amount of RAM a program says it *wishes* to have. If available memory is less than that the system will have to give it less, but it will still run normally, simply more limited in the max size and number of documents it may handle. The min size tells it to not even try in less memory. The default Min size is set by the developer, who usually knows what minimum amount of memory it needs. The only reason I can think of to set identical Min and Prefered sizes would be if you was certain to always require that exact amount of memory and not more (ie you know you will always open documents of a certain size, never smaller or bigger); this seems bogus (if you're not certain to require that amount each time you use it, then there's no reason to set it to refuse to launch with less). This is for your convenience, so that apps won't refuse to launch even if there's still enough RAM to run them, as happened before System 7.1 (if I set PhotoShop to request 100MB because I sometimes need it, I don't want it to bark when there's only 98MB available, which will still be more than adequate). As a rule of thumb, when you want to set the Min size to more than default, just set it to the "Suggested size", which is what the developer thought reasonable to operate the app in most occasions, unless you really know you always need more. In most cases you can keep the default min size, since it's only meant to handle already tight memory conditions where it is more important to be able to launch the app than to get maximum performances. The only cases where upping the min size was often required was for very old apps that didn't expect to run on big 24-bit color monitors when those became available, which required much bigger screen buffers than previous small b&w or 256 colors monitors. Some further readings if my explanations aren't clear: http://www.upenn.edu/computing/printout/archive/v12/6/memory.html Rightsizing Mac application memory - Penn Printout, May 1996 http://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/memory/ MacInstruct Online -- All I Ever Needed to Know About Memory! And if you're a bit more curious, this document for 4D developers also covers the way Windows does it: http://www.deepskytech.com/downloads/If_Memory_Serves_Me_Right.pdf There's some minor errors in it: it says memory allocation under classic Mac OS is fixed with no way for an app to request temporary non-contiguous memory. This used to be true in very old systems but not any more. There are actually 2 ways to request temp memory: the good (you'll see the app's memory size grow as documents become bigger) and the bad (which puts the temp memory in the system heap instead of the application heap). That's a way to tell well-written apps from junk just by looking at the "About this mac" dialog while opening bigger and bigger files (some good apps may still seem to request temp system mem when they use system features to handle data like QuickTime, which is normal). ---- VRic ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
