MacIDRIS?

[Matthias Urlichs]

In comp.sys.mac.apps, article <1179 at appleoz.oz.au>,
  ksand at appleoz.oz.AU (Kent Sandvik) writes:
< urlichs at smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) writes
<   in article <90.140.19:17:53 at smurf.sub.org>:
< 
< : - Compatibility means that they're compatible to their other IDRIS products,
< :   not to Unix.
< 
< Actually POSIX...
< 
Umm, yes, this version says it's Posix compatible, but if that's Posix then
there's a lot more in your standard Unix system than what's in the standard.

< :  - Commands means that if you tell their "ed" to print a lines, then it will do
< :    so. If that line has a form-feed character in the middle so that the screen
< :    gets cleared when printing and you don't have a chance to see what is there,
< :    then so be it. (No, no "od" either.)
< 
< OK, I'll send this in as a bug report to the developer, thx.
<     
Unfortunately the documentation doesn't mention any electronic addresses.
It has a bunch of bug report forms which I ignored, because I had three times
more problems than bug report forms. :-(

< : Without a MMU, you can't. It's just a Multifinder process among others.
< 
< It actually makes use of the PMMU if it exists in the system.  But due
< to the nature it is a pure MF proc, and that is the beaty, you could run
< it on a Mac Plus or other non-A/UX hardware.  And in the new release you
< could cut-paste between apps as well as run cron and uucp jobs in the
< background. 
< 
This seems to be a newer version. 3.2.3A didn't mention PMMUs.
< :    < 
< :    What's scheduling? Unix proper doesn't even have it, and you wonder about
< :    MacIdris?
< 
< Idris has scheduling, and depending on the background mix the processes under
< MacIdris gets timeslices. Actually the scheduling even supports real-time
< extensions...
<     
The problem is that it still (at least in my version) depends on getting
time slices from MultiFinder, so any real-time extension isn't.

< The new release will have a Bourne shell, many GNU project utilities,  and
< yes, vi.
<     
It's a shame they didn't bother to tell me...

< Actually I'm personally impressed with the ANSI C compliant, optimizing
< compiler.  A lot of people have complained about weird file names and
< weird utilities, and that's what you get when you try to conform to
< POSIX :-).  We did some benchmarks with the C compiler under A/UX and
< the code quality was in the same level as gcc. 
< 
I didn't know POSIX specifies C header files to be in "/hdrs" instead of
"/usr/include"? ;-)
Or "head" to be renamed "first".

Also, a lot of the "weird stuff" didn't seem to be covered by POSIX.
All I can say that in the version I have, people coming from the Unix side
will be pretty unhappy.

< :    No Mac screen support like "mouse" or "scroll bars".
< 
< Yes.

Does this mean "Yes that's a problem", or "Yes" as opposed to my "No", meaning
that now they do support mouse and scroll bars and (gasp) copy/paste?

< :    No manual pages on disk, and precious few on paper (they cost extra).
< 
< The manual pages will be supplied on HyperCard.
<     
Looks like the Intermetrics/Whitesmiths people don't want to tell people about
new versions. (I got my copy from the US side of things because the Australian
phone number which has been posted to comp.sys.mac didn't work.)

< If you want to send the bug reports straight to the developer, send
< email to john at wsa.oz.au, or AUST0282 at applelink.apple.com, I'm sure John
< is interested to hear about any problems with the product.  He could
< also tell more about new stuff in MacIdris. 
< 
Thanks, I'll do that.

< I don't think that the location of a product has to do anything with
< local support in Germany... 
< 
Umm, I was speaking about Apple's A/UX 2.0 here...

-- 
Matthias Urlichs