🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <danpop.827971541@rscernix>, danpop@mail.cern.ch (Dan Pop) wrote:

[...]
>>> Can you use a Mac without its shell?  (I believe it's Finder.)
>>
>>Actually, yes. For many utilities, you make a startup disk which doesn't
>>have a Finder.
>
>And how do you start the next app?  By rebooting the system from another
>startup disk?  How do you switch between apps?

The application must make the system calls to start up the other apps. 
This was not uncommon in the period '86-88 or so.  There were many
possible replacements for the Finder, some of which allowed multitasking
(e.g. Switcher) before the Multifinder option was added by Apple in System
6.  Now, the only one that comes to mind is the Norton Utilities Emergency
Disk.  It boots up Finderless to the Norton app, which in turn starts up
the various utilities, and you switch among them with menu selections. 
I'd guess that you could boot up directly to MPW, and then you could start
up applications from a command line shell.

This is sort of like a "captive" account in VMS, or changing the startup
shell item in the /etc/passwd file in unix.

BTW, this is an odd newsgroup list, and an odd thread title, for such a
question, isn't it?

$.02 -Ron Shepard