Slow system 7 modal dialogs....

[Repenning Alexander <ralex@tigger.cs.colorado.edu>]

I didn't quite pay attention what was going on in the menu bar when I
poped up some modal dialogs but I always had then them impression that
any sort of modal dialog in MCL 2.0 combined with System 7 "feels"
very, very sluggish compared to pre-system 7 days. While the speed is
acceptable on Quadra it's a real pain on my MacII. It seems that
too many things are going on that I do not quite understand or need:

1) the menu bar gets grayed out
2) depending on the dialog-items in the modal dialog the Edit
   menu does not get grayed out
3) the DISK gets accessed (WHY?, I've preloaded all functions)

While 1) and 2) are conceptually nice, the implementation seems very
inefficient on a MacII. Some of my old dialogs are pretty much useless
since they were intended to be typing short-cuts. It can take some
seconds for the menu bar to settle! In case of nested modal dialogs
(only to deal with error situations) things are even worse.

Is there a way to get the old behavior back (no graying out, just
"boings" on clicks outside the modal dialog)? Do I have to buy a
Quadra? ... and WHY does the disk get accessed?

  Alex Repenning