Download
autquit7-1.4.1.zip (info) a zipped hfs disk image and checksum file. The disk image can be mounted with Mini vMac. Includes source code.
AutQuit7 assists in “wrapping” an application for the Mac Plus that requires System 7.0 or later, so that you can use it with Mini vMac more as you would a native application for your machine. For applications that can run in System 6 or earlier, “AutoQuit” may be preferred.
To use AutQuit7, copy the application to a new folder on your System 7 disk. Then make an alias of the application and move the alias to the “Startup Items” folder within the “System Folder”. Do not place the AutQuit7 application directly in the “Startup Items” folder, because items in the same folder as AutQuit7 modify its behavior, and you don’t want to mix up these items with the “Startup Items”.
In the simplest case of using AutQuit7, when there are no other items in the folder containing it, then (after the next restart) Mini vMac will automatically quit when you shut down the emulated machine. The way it works is that AutQuit7 is a background only application, and on shut down the system tells all background applications to quit. At this time AutQuit7 sets a flag within Mini vMac, which causes Mini vMac to quit when the last disk is ejected. (This flag isn’t just always set, because it is possible to eject all disks even when not shutting down.) This behavior is basically the same as using “EjctQuit”, but doesn’t require System 7.5. (It requires System 7 or later.) Like EjctQuit, AutQuit7 will not quit Mini vMac if the shift key is down.
If you make an alias of an application, and place the alias in the same folder as AutQuit7, and then rename the alias to “app”, then AutQuit7 will launch the application at startup. Furthermore, when this application quits, the system notifies AutQuit7, and AutQuit7 then tells the system to shut down. (And then, as in the previous case, Mini vMac quits.)
If you make an alias of a document, and place the alias in the same folder as AutQuit7, and then rename the alias to “doc”, then AutQuit7 will tell the application “app” to open the document at launch.
If either “app” or “doc” are an alias pointing onto a disk that is not currently mounted, then AutQuit7 will wait up to 15 seconds for the disk to mount. However, the Macintosh system software can mistakenly decide that an already mounted disk is the disk it is looking for, particularly if it has the same creation date as the correct disk. So if you use one of the “Blanks” set of pre-made disk images, you may want to erase the disk image before using it (with the “Erase Disk...” command in the Special menu of the Finder) to make sure it has a unique creation date.
If you create a new folder in the same folder as AutQuit7, and rename the new folder to “cf”, then AutQuit7 will include all the functionality of “ClockFix”. This feature is included because there is some minimum overhead to a background application, and so it is less expensive to have one combined background application instead of needing both AutQuit7 and ClockFix. If the ClockFix functionality is enabled, then AutQuit7 will take a small amount of processor time about once a second, otherwise essentially no processor time is used. That may be a reason for not enabling this functionality when it isn’t needed.
Warning: according to Apple’s Technical Note TN1126, “All applications and Background Only Applications should have a memory partition set to at least 64K. This ensures there is always enough room for the system and extensions to work in the application’s heap.” The memory partition for AutQuit7 is set to 15K, and it seems to work, but it is possible there could be a problem depending on what extensions are installed. If so you can increase the memory partition of AutQuit7.
See the Compiling page for instructions on compiling AutQuit7 from the source code.
You can redistribute AutQuit7 and/or modify it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the included file COPYING.
AutQuit7 is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the license for more details.
News:
September 5, 2018
Thanks to this report, now use launchUseMinimum in launchControlFlags, so that AutQuit7 can launch “app” even if the preferred memory size is greater than the largest unused block.
October 6, 2012
As reported by "David", it didn't work in the Basilisk II emulator. Copied fix from the Mini vMac build system for the code intended to detect when running in Mini vMac.
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If you find AutQuit7 useful, please consider helping the Gryphel Project, of which it is a part.