[Use-revolution] Re: revolution Memory allocation Mac

[Jeanne A. E. DeVoto]

At 3:47 AM -0800 11/21/2001, Ian Bridges wrote:
>How is it that Revolution can grab more memory than I allocate to it through
>the get info box? This contradicts how every mac application I have ever
>seen behaves.

I quote (from the Troubleshooting section of the docs):

--------
The Mac OS allocates a fixed amount of memory to each application. If an
application requires additional memory, it can make a system call to
request temporary memory for itself, over and above the application's
assigned allocation. This temporary memory appears in the Finder's "About
This Computer" window, and in other utilities that display memory use, as
part of the application's assigned allocation.

On Mac OS systems, Revolution requests temporary memory when necessary
(typically for displaying images and playing movies that require a great
deal of memory, or for opening large stacks).

If for some reason you want to prevent Revolution from requesting temporary
memory, use ResEdit (or another resource editor) to edit the TMEM 128
resource in the Revolution application. Change the content of the resource
from 0101 to 0001 to disable temporary memory. (You will need to increase
Revolution's memory allocation to at least 6M plus the total size of all
the stacks that will be open at once.)

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>The flip side of this is, if it is possible for Mac applications to
>dynamically allocate themselves more Ram as they need it (like Rev seems
>to), why don't more do it?

As someone else said, most applications have a pretty good idea how much
memory they'll need and allocate that amount. But quite a few applications
do make use of this mechanism, although it may not be as obvious if you
don't use large files or otherwise require a lot of memory on those apps.

--
Jeanne A. E. DeVoto ~ jeanne at runrev.com
http://www.runrev.com/
Runtime Revolution Limited - Power to the Developer!