Memory usage

[J. Landman Gay]

Shari wrote:

> I set the memory lower than I knew the stack normally used, and lo
> and behold, the visual effects were fixed.
> 
> Can someone explain this one logically?  I am utterly baffled.

MetaCard doesn't use memory the way most MacOS 9 apps do, it uses memory
the way other operating systems do -- that is, except for a few things,
it pulls RAM from the available pool in the system heap. This is how all
other OSs work (including OS X). There is a way you can change one of
MC's resources (the TMON resource, see the MC Read Me) so that MC acts
like other Mac apps and stays in its own memory partition, but in
general you don't want to mess with that because it is less efficient.

Because MC pulls RAM from the common pool, setting its memory allocation
to a high number reduces the available memory outside of the partition.
If you reduce it by a large enough amount by assigning a huge partition
to MC, the amount inside MC's partition will go mostly unused and there
won't be enough outside the partition to accomodate what your scripts
are trying to do. This is especially noticeable with QT, which needs a
lot of system RAM to work well.

Leaving the default allocation alone produces the best balance in general.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com