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MacPaint and QuickDraw Source Code

computerhistory.org

46 pointsboh17 comments

The Macintosh let the user change the desktop background by specifying an 8x8 black-and-white pattern, which would tile the screen. It was very difficult to make a pattern that actually looked any good. (The default was a simple checkerboard that approximated a nice 50% gray.) Atkinson couldn't stand most people's custom patterns, which were TBH pretty ugly. So instead of making real Mac windows, all the MacPaint windows were drawn in place over a fake desktop, with the default 50% gray pattern. You couldn't change the "desktop" pattern when you were using the MacPaint app. And you know what? No one complained - it was a nice-looking program :-)

Source: at the bottom of http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

When maximized, Photoshop still uses a 50% gray background. Not only would it be far too distracting if it showed my desktop picture in the background, the 50% gray surrounding helps me evaluate the colors onscreen.

Why is this in the museum? Well, Don Knuth once said that the MacPaint program was the best code ever written, and asked that the source be made available for study. Bill Atkinson rescued his old source code, and got Steve Jobs to push it through Apple's legal department. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/a...

Bill Atkinson remains one my idols. If only the Hypercard source would be released!

Pretty sure Andy pushed it through.

I got fwd'd a copy of the original thread :)

Yup, it was Andy - according to Andy, according to BusinessWeek :-)

Care to share that thread here?

I love this bit:

    appleMenu: IF NOT Monkey THEN
    BEGIN
      IF active THEN
        BEGIN
          KillStuff;

...

What does $S compiler directive mean?

Answering to myself: segment name. Usually 8 spaces, but there are some named ones, like SegInit, which get unloaded when they are no longer needed.

The 128 Mac had a very tight memory footprint (and no VM). Add to that that stuff was all being loaded from a floppy. The performance they were able to squeeze out of it was amazing.

Wow, long time since I have last read Pascal code. Makes me wonder if there any Pascal code still in use somewhere.

Sure. For example there's BESEN, which is a complete implementation of the ECMAScript 5th edition standard. Programmed by a single person in Object Pascal.

http://besen.sourceforge.net/

On the Mac, Interarchy FTP client still seem to have Pascal code, according to this 2007 interview http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/interarchy_interview

My previous employer still has actively maintained PL/I in production. Anything is possible in the bowels of Corporate America.

Yes, I've seen Cobol, APL too... but pascal was not so much a language for business applications, except in delphi I guess.

There is definitely quite a bit of Cobol around on mainframes powering many mission-critical applications. Replacement of these old systems generates huge revenues for companies like Oracle/Peoplesoft and SAP.

Pascal was a great learning language. Probably second to BASIC, but much better as a precursor to learning C.

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