Re: STiNG, CAB, and Multitasking (strikes back)

[Peter Rottengatter <perot@pallas.amp.uni-hannover.de>]

On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Yves Pelletier wrote:

> >From a user's point of view, I must admit that this business
> about what must be loaded before or after MiNT is, IMHO, one of
> the last major irritants left with MiNT.  Peter is right on at
> least this point: it makes MiNT look kludgy, and more difficult
> to approach.  
>
> ...
> 
> In my ideal world, (the one where poverty and disease are
> eradicated :-), MiNT would be the very first thing in the auto
> folder, as befits a loadable operating system module.  Then,
> TSRs and other programs would load behind it.

I agree here, though I must add, when talking about major irritations,
then one should take into account that the whole business of having
some programs before others is totally confusing for many users that
aren't that deep into TOS details, especially as most desktops sort
the files listing of the AUTO folder. This is one major point in favour
of trying whereever possible to remove such dependencies. Another one
is the terrible situation that you may find you need to run program A
before B, but for another reason it won't work unless B is run before 
A. I had that situation once with NVDI and some self-written screen 
driver. Lucky enough, since the driver was my own software, I was able
to split it into two programs, one to run before, the other one after
NVDI. The general situation is worse, as one cannot simply split one
of the programs. I doubt that it would be possible with MiNT ? Anyway
this also suggests to remove dependencies whereever possible (sure it
might not be *always* possible).

Now in the current situation of bending system vectors, the change that
removes this dependency for a fair number of programs is simple and 
small and safe, and it does not even worsen the compatibility with other
programs. Therefore I see no reason to dismiss the change. Are there any ?


Cheers  Peter

---------------------------------------------------------------------
   Peter Rottengatter       perot@pallas.amp.uni-hannover.de
                            http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~perot
---------------------------------------------------------------------