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From: philo@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Phil Odor)
Subject: Re: MacScheme
Message-ID: <philo-0910950941320001@mac-h164e.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
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Organization: CALL Centre, Univ. of Edinburgh
References: <Johan.Dahl-2409950607140001@venus.ling.lu.se>
   <45579g$67a@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 09:41:32 GMT
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In article <45579g$67a@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, paulweiss@aol.com
(PaulWeiss) wrote:

> MacScheme is distributed now'days by ACS (Academic Computing Specialists)
> in Utah. Their phone number is (800)531-3227. My most recent version is
> 4.2, from mid '93. It's System 7.x friendly, but doesn't take advantage of
> any Sys 7 features. It's a lovely quick system which is "on hold", if I 
> understand the present scenario correctly,  as far as any current
> development is concerned. Not so good for product development, just fine
> for academic stuff.

In article <Johan.Dahl-2109950225220001@venus.ling.lu.se>,
Johan.Dahl@ling.lu.se writes:
> 

> The biggest problem I had with it is that the toolbox interface
> refered to the old "Inside Macintosh" manuals, which I don't have.
> And the new "Inside Macintosh" manuals are organized in such a way
> that you have to spend a hundred bucks before you have enough
> information to actually create an application.
> 
> What I want to know is if the product is still supported.  I sent my
> warranty card in recently, but it came back as undeliverable.
> 
> -thant

I recently updated from an early version of MacScheme/Toolsmith to the
latest, and was sorely disappointed with ACS' distribution service. After
a long delay, what I got for the money was the new software, but only the
MacScheme manual, most of which is a variant on the Scheme report. The
quality was wanting, being paper binding in place of the older
hard-cover/ring bound, and poorly packed: it didn't survive the flight
very well. 

More important was the lack of support or documentation for the ToolSmith
extensions - after all, this is the part of the product which is supposed
to allow 'serious' development of Mac applications to take place. I asked
what had happened to my copy of the updated ToolSmith manuals (since a
*lot* has changed in the Mac between the early MacScheme release and now) 
and the supplier simply refused to send me any, saying that 'the old
ToolSmith manuals still applied'.

If the manuals have *not* changed, then I wouldn't recommend the product.
To do anything like a decent job on development, you need a lot of
handholding, especially if (like me) such work is on the fringe of your
main work, not at its centre. Look at the efforts Metrowerks put into
supplementing Apple documentation. (And compare, while you are at it, the
kind of customer support they offer). Suppose you wanted to know if you
could use MacScheme to create OpenDoc parts, or how to handle
communications and networking seamlessly in a Scheme tradition? If you
were doing this under MPW or CodeWarrior, you would find examples,
documentation on their regularly updated CD-Roms, discussions on the net,
and a community of users. The backdrop against which to test the offerings
of compiler manufacturers has changed a lot, and some of them just aren't
keeping up. I have found more support for the freely distributable systems
than MacScheme.

However, even if the manuals haven't been radically altered it seems to me
to be penny pinching not to supply the complete set at an update
(especially one which is not trivially priced).

It's hard to tell how much of this is a reflection on the developers
themselves, though it feels from the distance they keep, the delays
involved, and the support materials that I've seen, that the blame can't
all go on the distributors.

-- 
Phil Odor, CALL Centre, University of Edinburgh
4 Buccleuch Place             Tel +44 31 650 4282
Edinburgh                     Fax +44 31 668 3285
Scotland EH8 9LW            email philo@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
