Funky, the long long reply I was expecting ;) (don't like mac, never will - my biggest regret is that the atari days are over) Strangely (apparently) director almost never uses 100% on my sys... for most stuff it's like 30-40 % max. It certainly never hogs the darn thing - like this guy said it slows down the whole computer so there must be something going on that I would not call normal. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Colin Holgate" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 4:13 PM Subject: Re: <lingo-l> processorspeed/multitasking/multiuser
> >3 - afaik multitasking on mac doesn't excist so what's the point > > > I was working at Apple when they introduced the first Mac system that > did multitasking (not counting A/UX). The best I can remember, it was > in 1989, but it may have been 1988, seven years before Windows 95. > > The style of multitasking on Mac systems other than Mac OS X and A/UX > (which was the first Unix system that Apple did for the Mac) is > cooperative multitasking. The idea is that each application can tell > the system when it wants some more time. If the programmer doesn't do > anything awkward, the default is every second I think. That means > that an application sitting in the background will be polled once a > second to give it a chance to do anything it needs to do. > > If anything happens in the meantime, like the user moves a window and > exposes some of the background application window, it will get a > message from the system to tell it to update its contents. > > The good thing about cooperative multitasking is that you can bias > your applications (you can't, but the kind programmer can) to take > just what they need from the system. For example, a kind clock > application would only take a tiny bit of processor time once every > second. A communications program might feel it needs more frequent > updates from the system, but it need not hog the CPU as much as it > could. A renderer would probably hog away, although you'll notice > that some applications, Media Cleaner for example, will revert to not > hogging if the user moves the mouse. > > The other multitasking is pre-emptive multitasking. Here the > applications can't hog the CPU, the system dishes out equal time to > every one. The advantage would be things like you can continue typing > while some graphics heavy window in the background is refreshing. Or > you can hold down a menu for a while, and still the video will play. > It can appear to be more people friendly to be pre-emptive, but it > may mean that some applications are given far more time than they > ever need. > > It's always been amusing to follow the non-multitasking claims > against the Mac. When System 7 came out, it was heralded as being the > first multitasking Mac OS. One of the set demos people were doing at > Apple was to open up five or six applications, all of them doing > something at the same time. Once the audience were impressed with the > multitasking, the presenter would confess "and this is System 6!". > > > Meanwhile, there is a Director related thing to know. Rather than > Macromedia dictating that your projector should get all the CPU time, > there is a Mac specific function called CPUHogTicks that you can set. > By playing with this you can create a more multitasking friendly > application, or you can go for all out performance by hogging all the > CPU time. > > > -- > > [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to > http://www.penworks.com/LUJ/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, > email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]) > Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!] > > > [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/LUJ/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
