From: afleuti@inf.ethz.ch (Andreas Patrick Fleuti)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction
Subject: Re: Amiga Multitasking...yawn
Date: 1 Mar 1996 12:55:20 GMT
Organization: Dept. Informatik, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Message-ID: <4h6s3p$9o1@neptune.ethz.ch>
References: <4h4qtn$96v@cloner3.netcom.com>
Reply-To: afleuti@inf.ethz.ch
NNTP-Posting-Host: h9.inf.ethz.ch
Hallo,
First the Amiga has the best multitasking I know (I know SPARC (Sun), PPC MAC, Win31, OS2/Warp)
However you right in a way. The Workbench is nothing else than one task. The problem is when you give workbench something to do (for example copy something) than it will do that so you can't do (nearly) anything than waiting. If you use the Shell you can copy something and still use workbench because the shell is a task too like the workbench.
You can even tell the shell to execute a command, so that the command get his own task.
> run command <
You may have WB 2.X or 3.X . Than you have the commoditie >Newkey< (or something that sound similar). With that you can crate a key (F1 for example) that execute a command (for example NewShell). I copyed the >Newkey< to WB-Startup-drawer. So whenever workbench is loaded, every programm in this drawer is executed in multitasking manner, so no waiting for the end of any programm, just waittime for loading.
So if ever the workbench is busy (and blocked) I press F1 and a shell open immideatly.
Whith that shell I can do whatever I want.
Running programms (=running tasks) work together, so you realy can print a document and listen to a musicprogramm running in the background, transform 24bit picture in 8 bit pictures, playing check and have a clock somewhere which tells you the time and you still can use workbench, if you didn't give it already a job because workbench is just one program (and one task).
In the next Amiga OS (Maybe OS4.0) there shoud be a Workbench that acts in multitasking.
