- TaskPriHandler v1.0 -

                             by Alain Malek 1995

                         TaskPriHandler is FreeWare.

- What is TaskPriHandler ?

TaskPriHandler implements dynamic task priority to the Amiga.
The main advantage is that all 'batch' tasks in need of a lot of CPU resource
won't slow down interactive tasks.
Packing a large amount of files is a good example of a 'batch' task.
In general, if you try to use some other programs while packing you will
get only half of the CPU time. With TaskPriHandler you won't feal that
you are packing in the background.

- How to install TaskPriHandler ?

Simply add 'TaskPriHandler' to your startup-sequence.
(Every task added before this point won't have dynamic priority.)

- How does it work ?

Every task of a priority from -128 to 0 will be taken as dynamic tasks.
Tasks with a priority higher than 0 will be treated as real-time tasks.

Every second TaskPriHandler will evaluate the priority of all the dynamic
tasks, depending of the CPU resource used by each task.
If a task uses a lot of CPU resource then it's priority will go down.

- Is there a problem ?

Yes, there is a slight problem :(
If you start a first batch task, then it's priority will go down.
Then you launch a second batck task. It's priority will be higher than
the first one. So only the second task will be running. After some time
the priority of the first task will be higher, and the priority of the
second task lower. The first task will run for 1 seconde, then the second
task for one second, etc ... After some time the two priority will be the
same, so both tasks will be running 'continuously'. (I hope you understand:)
This problem appears also when you run a 'batch' task in the background
and in the same time you are using intensively an interactive task.
(for example, scrolling in a texteditor continuously). Your interactive task
will hang during one second the continue, hang again, continue etc...
I've been using TaskPriHandler for some month now, and wasn't much affected
by this problem....

If you have some questions or suggestions then contact me:

Email: amalek@di.epfl.ch

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
-rw-r--r-- 15532/15007     666    1140  58.4% -lh5- beaf Aug 16  1995 TaskPriHandler
-rw-r--r-- 15532/15007     979    2273  43.1% -lh5- b789 Aug 11  1995 TaskPriHandler.readme
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         2 files    1645    3413  48.2%            Aug 11  1995