Apple II Magazines (PO)/Bits and Bytes Volume 11, No. 05 (1989-11)(Apple Computing Enjoyment Society)(Side A).zip/Bits and Bytes Volume 11, No. 05 (1989-11)(Apple Computing Enjoyment Society)(Side A).po/ARTICLES/GSOS.V.5.txt

Text File | 1996-12-24 | 10KB | 194 lines

              -=[ IIgs SYSTEM SOFTWARE VERSION 5.0 ]=-

As observed by Jason Harper at the Boston AppleFest, May 5-7 1989.
This file may be freely distributed and reprinted.

STATUS: To be released "early summer".  At about the same time, APDA
(the Apple Programmer's and Developer's Association) will make
available the documentation and a new version of APW (Apple
Programmer's Workshop) with the tools needed to take full advantage of
System 5.0.

GQUIT (the mechanism for switching between GS/OS and ProDOS 8
programs): Somewhat faster going to a ProDOS 8 program from GS/OS.  6X
or more faster coming back to GS/OS (about 4 seconds) since the
operating system remained in memory rather than having to be mostly
reloaded from disk.  This may result in reduced desktop sizes for
users of AppleWorks Classic and similar reductions in available memory
in other ProDOS 8 programs that know how to use the IIgs's extended
memory.

GS/OS DEVICE DRIVERS:
  AppleDisk 3.5:
    New 'scatter read' feature.  If a multiblock read request fulfills
    certain requirements (must be to fast RAM and be over a certain
size), then the disk driver will read whole tracks at a time,
putting each block encountered (which won't be in sequential
order, due to interleave) into its proper place within the area
being read.  This makes the disk interleave effectively 1:1 for
large reads, regardless of the disk's actual interleave.

SCSI:
    Has been completely rewritten.  Completely bypasses the firmware
on the Apple SCSI card, increasing the data transfer rate by 6X.
This uses a previously unimplemented GS/OS feature: a 'supervisory
driver' manages the interface hardware to which various types of
devices can be connected (the SCSI bus in this case), and various
device drivers use the supervisory driver to implement access to
the different types of devices. Supplied drivers will handle at
least generic hard disks and CD-ROM drives.  Other SCSI devices
that could be easily handled now due to this new feature include
tape backup units, scanners, and laser printers.
    Console: Greatly speeded up, especially for single-character
output.  Ought to be fast enough to implement a decent terminal
program with now.

GS/OS FILE SYSTEM TRANSLATORS (FSTs):
  ProDOS FST:
    Now supports lower case letters in filenames.
    Can add resource forks onto existing standard files.
    AppleShare FST (NEW): AppleShare file servers on an AppleTalk
network are now fully accessible.  The files on the server appear
with their full 31-character Macintosh filename, including
upper/lower case and special characters.  One consequence of this
is that fully network-aware programs will almost have to be
graphics-based, since filenames can include characters not
available on the text screen.  Still no sign of any file server
software that can run on a IIgs instead of Mac, but that doesn't
necessarily have to come from Apple.

WINDOW MANAGER:
  Opening, closing, and selecting windows have been optimized.  Along
with the improvements to QuickDraw mentioned above, this gives
desktop-interface programs substantially faster user response.  The
System 5.0 Finder on a normal IIgs appears to run just as fast as
the 4.0 Finder on a IIgs equipped with a TransWarp accellerator.  I
didn't get a chance to see System 5.0 running on a machine with a
TransWarp, but that should be AWESOME!!!
  The new call NewWindow2 allows a window to be created and a list of
controls added to it all in one step, similar to the Dialog
Manager's GetNewModalDialog call.  In conjunction with resources
(more info below) to define the window and controls, some new types
of controls, and an improved TaskMaster call to handle them, this
allows a programmer to set up a fully working window with controls
with almost no effort.

CONTROL & MENU MANAGERS:
  Scrolling menus are now implemented.  This means that if you have
menu of desk accessories, fonts, etc. that extends off the bottom of
the screen, dragging the mouse to the bottom of that menu will cause
it to continiously scroll up the screen until everything has been
displayed.  You can drag the mouse back to the top of the menu to
scroll the other direction.  This brings the number of accessible
NDAs (New Desk Accessories) up to 249, and the number of accessible
fonts into the thousands (exact number depends on the application).
  'Pop-up' menus are now available in windows and dialogs.  These are
a convenient way of selecting one of a series of options without
taking as much space on the screen as a family of radio buttons
would.  For example, a terminal program could have a 'Baud rate'
button that, when clicked, brings up a list of all available baud
rates.  The pop-up is always positioned so that the current
selection is right under the mouse, so releasing the mouse
  button without moving the mouse doesn't change the selection.  The
pop-up menu will scroll as described above for normal menus if there
is no room for all items to be listed.

TEXT EDIT TOOL SET (NEW):
  Think of it as a "word processor in a box".  One of the System 5.0
sample programs, hopefully to be made available when the other 5.0
materials are, was a 5 page long program that implemented a complete
graphics-based wordprocessor, including font/size/style changes,
cut/copy/paste that can span multiple lines, and auto word wrap.
Text Edit can also be used in a read-only mode to easily display
text, a program's help file for example: just open a window with a
scroll bar or two, add a Text Edit item, tell it where in memory the
text is, and forget about it.  TaskMaster handles all the details.

RESOURCE MANAGER (NEW):
  This is the biggie.  The IIgs now has a full Resource Manager like
the Mac does.  A 'resource' in this context is an item of data
available for use by the program, identified by a type and an ID
number.  Common resource types include icons, menus, window
definitions, and dialog/alert boxes.  It is also possible to define
custom resource types for any other sort of data a program needs.
The resources can be used in a program just by referring to their ID
number.  In both the Mac and IIgs implementations, resources can be
  modified and added by the running program: for example, a program
could store the user's preferences in a resource which would be
immediately available the next time it was run.  The resources are
kept in a separate 'fork' of the program file itself, so they can't
get accidentally separated from the program if it is copied to a
different disk or directory (unless an early ProDOS 16-based copy
utility is used that doesn't know about files with resource forks).
One problem with this is that there is currently no way to transmit
a file with a resource fork via modem: the Binary II format used for
preserving the attributes of Apple II files has no provision for
  resource forks, although this will certainly be added in the near
future.  The updated APW for System 5.0 will include Rez, a resource
compiler.  This takes a textual description of the desired resources
(in a format that looks rather like C language source code) and
generates a resource fork from them.  This is copied into the
resource fork of the program file with another command.  Changes to
a program's resources, such as rearranging a dialog or changing the
name of a menu item, consist of editing the Rez source code,
recompiling it, and recopying the resource fork into the program
file.  The program itself doesn't have to be recompiled or relinked.
  Apple doesn't seem to be planning a full WYSIWYG resource editor
like the Mac's ResEd for the near future, but a similar product is
being developed by Simple Software Systems International.  SSSI's
Genesys utility allows you to design menus, dialogs, icons, windows,
etc. on the screen and then generates source code for defining them
in most IIgs languages, including Rez.  It is scheduled for release
at the September AppleFest.  With such tools, it should be easy to
get simple desktop-based programs running in hours rather than days.

SYSTEM SOFTWARE:
  Finder:
  Due to the various improvements mentioned above, the Finder would be
much more usable even if no features were added.  Some of the
additions I noted were:
     'Get Info' returns a lot more info now, such as the file's full
     pathname, the total size of all files contained in a directory,
and user-entered notes on the file (possibly on file servers
only).  Also it looks really nifty now: the window appears as a
little notebook with a spiral binding along the top edge and tabs
along the bottom that you click on to turn to that 'page' of info
on the file. It is now fully network-aware.  It allows you to log
on to and off of any file servers on the network, dims out the
icons for files and folders you don't have access rights to, and
gives meaningful error messages for network errors.

  Control Panel NDA:
    There is now a full Control Panel desk accessory much like the
Mac's.  It is a large window, with the left 1/3 being a vertically
scrolling list of icons with a line of text under each, which
represent the various Control Panel Devices (CDEVs) available.
You click on one of the CDEVs and the settings for whatever
options that CDEV controls appear in the right 2/3 of the window.
The supplied CDEVs correspond roughly with the 9 menus under the
existing Control Panel CDA (which will still be available).  The
    Chooser will also be a CDEV: programs that print will no longer
need a 'Choose printer' menu item.  Selecting that item in an
existing program will generate a 'Use control panel to select
printer' message.  PROGRAMMER NOTE: if you have written a program
that uses the Print Manager but doesn't support NDAs, you're in
trouble.  Additional CDEVs can be installed just like NDAs, CDAs,
and INITs just by putting them in the right directory on your boot
disk.  For example, Applied Engineering could easily produce a
CDEV for controlling their TransWarp GS accellerator.  It would
probably consist of a single pop-up menu listing the available
    speeds (which can be read off of the card, so the CDEV would work
with all future versions of the TWGS automatically).

CD-ROM Remote Control NDA:
    This is used for controlling the audio playback features of the
Apple (and maybe other manufacturer's, I'm not sure how
standardized this is) CD-ROM drive.  It has all the features of
and even looks like an actual compact disk player remote control.

         Jason Harper