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In article <764@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, srm@ucbiris.berkeley.edu (Richard Mateosian) writes:
> >>Mr. Myers is having fun, but I really don't think that his smart-ass 
> >>paraphrasing contributes anything.  
> 
> Lighten up, guys.

Sorry, but as a some-time journalist, I find I have an unusual pre-
occupation with facts.  This is not necessarily something that hackers,
salesmen, or publicists seem to be too concerned with.

So, in the interest of accuracy, I have enclosed Larry Rosenstein's
actual responses.  I know this is somewhat dated (he and I took
successive vacations, contributing to the delays) but I think many
out there would like to see the actual answers, unedited.

    Date: Tue, 27 May 86 12:39:59 pdt
    From: pyramid!voder!apple!lsr (Larry Rosenstein)
    To: gould9!joel@pyramid.UUCP
    Subject: Re: Apple's response to 10 Challenges

    Thanks for your comments on Usenet.
...

    I am
    enclosing my original response to Mr. Myers; feel free to post it to
    net.micro.mac.

    **** Begin Original Reply ****

    >From lsr Fri Jun 20 14:31:09 1986
    Received: by apple.csnet (4.12/5.1.Apple)
	    id AA02761; Wed, 7 May 86 15:03:19 pdt
    Date: Wed, 7 May 86 15:03:19 pdt
    From: lsr (Larry Rosenstein)
    Posted-Date: Wed, 7 May 86 15:03:19 pdt
    Message-Id: <8605072203.AA02761@apple.csnet>
    To: nathan%oregon-state@CSNET-RELAY
    Subject: Re: Ten Challenges  (long)
    Organization: Advanced Development Group, Apple Computer
    Status: RO

    I liked your suggestions.  Here are my comments on them.

    In article <21100039@orstcs.UUCP> you write:

    >Myers Challenge #1: (searching in editors)

    This is a good idea.  The Macintosh development system we are working on has
    a nice implementation of regular expressions.  They use special Mac
    characters for the meta-characters, rather than graphical diagrams, however.
    The special characters avoid some qutoing problems, but make search
    expressions non-portable.

    >Myers Challenge #2: (pipes)

    The development system also supports a pipeline syntax.  It can't execute
    the individual programs concurrently, but handles the problem of creating a
    temporary file and running the tools in sequence.  (It also allows you to
    send the output of a tool to a windows.)

    In fact the development system borrows a lot of concepts from UNIX, and
    makes it very easy to write these small tools.

    >Myers Challenge #3: (RAM disks)

    A good idea.  I haven't seen anything that does this yet.

    >Myers Challenge #4: (2 button mouse)

    I disagree with this.  If you look at the use of the second button on the
    Atari and Amiga you will see that it is inconsistent and hard to remember.
    I am very glad that we have 1 button on the Mac.

    >Myers Challenge #5: (Copy DA)

    This is a good idea.  It turns out that the development system provided all
    the functions of the Finder with a command line interface, so you never have
    to use the Finder while using the development system.

    >Myers Challenge #6: (GEM menus)

    I disagree with this one also.  I tried GEM and was always pulling down a
    menu by accident.  Holding the mouse button down is not very fatiguing and
    is better than constantly making little slips that break your train of
    thought and require some action to reverse.

    It would be easy to do this on the Mac, however.

    >Myers Challenge #7: (ResEdit)

    ResEdit is huge precisely because it is expandable.  It has custom editors
    for a few resoruce types and templates for many others.  It is exactly
    written in the way you suggest; a core program with pluggable editor modules
    (themselves resources).

    Constructing templates is very easy.  Writing a powerful graphical editor is
    more difficult, but is possible.  We will publish the specs for this when
    they are finalized.

    >Myers Challenge #8: (uniform device inteface)

    This is a good idea.  As I said the development system does some of this by
    allowing you to redirect input and output.

    We have a common language for talking to devices, and that is the driver
    calls.  I am not sure if the general model would be useful in all cases,
    however.  I'm sure that Quickdraw would be slower and harder to use if it
    went through driver calls.  Also, it would be difficult to fit all the
    Appletalk protocols into the same model as the serial port.

    >Myers Challenge #9: (document standard)

    This is a very good idea.  I'm sure that is such a standard emerges, Apple
    will be among the first to embrace it.  

    >Myers Challenge #10: (more challenges)

    I agree with this very much.  We won't be able to keep the Mac growing
    without people constantly breaking new ground.


    Larry Rosenstein

    Object Specialist
    Apple Computer

    UUCP:  {sun, voder, nsc, mtxinu, dual}!apple!lsr
    CSNET: lsr@Apple.CSNET
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