Memory Usage in MetaCard/Revolution
Mac Only (Mac Only)

> 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.

Posted 4/5/2002 by Jacqueline Landman Gay (HyperActive Software) to the MetaCard List   (See the complete post/thread)