🚀 go-pugleaf

in article <3308@druhi.ATT.COM>, med@druhi.ATT.COM (Myron Drapal) says:
> From Computer Shopper August 1988, page 214:
> "Atari to Release Fourth Edition of TOS"
> .....
> [text deleted - you can read the original]
> ***Flame On***
> [text deleted - you can read the original]
> ***Flame Off***
> Just so I don't leave you without some good news, the rest of the
> article was very informative.  It describes the fixes that are being
> included in the new version of TOS.  Maybe I'll see one by Christmas
> 1990...
> 					Myron Drapal
> 					AT&T Denver
> 					att!druhi!med

Well, I just couldn't let that pass, now could I?
First, I was never shown a review copy of the subject article. If someone
wants to call me "chief developer" without checking first, I can't really
control that, now can I, Mr. Drapal? [My business card says very clearly
"Manager, Product Development", and I would never use the term "chief
developer" - those days are past, and with other companies].

As to abuse of 'malloc', we did find several programs which, having allocated
memory via 'malloc', then went and accessed beyond it, or assumed successive
'malloc's would always return contiguous chunks of memory, and relied on it.
Now I consider that to be lazy, bad, programming practice. I have written
a LOT of code in the past, at the OS, utility and business application level.
Some of the code is still in daily use, running realworld businesses, five or
more years later. My programming experience taught me never to assume anything
and to abide by common-sense rules of design. (Please don't flame - it's
only my opinion, and I know there are a lot of people who don't share it)

I am certainly in no position to defend earlier releases of TOS. The Mega TOS
has been shipping with ST's for many months, so the "2 years between releases"
is not quite accurate. I have tried to be as honest as I can in postings to
this net, while maintaining a degree of calm which is sadly lacking in many
postings. I DO appreciate frustration which may have been caused in the past,
because I, too, have been on the receiving end of buggy OS and tools. I might
point out that Apple hasn't had very good press recently, but two wrongs don't
make a right, and I'm certainly not intimating that just because Apple
appears to have made mistakes then it's OK for Atari to do the same.

But I stand by my comment of having to remove certain improvements and bug
fixes because "misbehaved" programs broke. There is an incredible amount
of software out there, and I would guess that the vast majority of it is
used by people that wouldn't know one end of a source file from the other.
That is why compatibility is so important - people have money invested in
their software, and would like to take advantage of the improved performance
and features of the new TOS but don't want to have to pay again to buy new
versions of the software, even if they were to be made available. 

Compatibility is always an issue, and at some point it becomes necessary to
'bite the bullet' and say "Sorry, this is where we make the break". We have
decided, and rightly so, I believe, that the time to do it is not yet. It 
may make sense to do it on the 32-bit line, where there are bound to be
some problems with some software. We will address that issue quite soon, but
need to survey the more popular products, talk to the developers, and THEN 
decide how much compatibility is mandatory.

As for the parting shot about delivery of the new TOS, we have had it in Beta
for a couple of months, and expect to make a release to Developers next week.
Lead times to mask ROMs are quite long at present, so I don't expect the
new ROMs to be in production until late this year. But certainly before
Christmas 1990!

I hope this (lengthy) response clarifies the situation!

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Roy J. Good
Product Development, Atari Corporation

Views expressed are my own. Atari may agree or disagree; they have the right.
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