AMIGAOS-RELATED INFORMATION ABOUT ISTAR

Screens, Windows and Fonts: Sizes and Retargetting

Istar's control screen takes the same resolution and frequency as WorkBench screen (maybe can change that in later versions). The depth is 3, that is 8 colours.

Most panels on this screen are sized to be a certain proportion of the screen, so they should always look the same size, whatever resolution is used. In addition, most gadgets are sized and positioned in proportion, so should always look the same size and position. The exception to this appears to be the CheckBox gadget, which seems always to be 26 pixels wide.

However, the font used does not change - at present version. It is designed to look OK on a PAL screen and uses topaz 8 font. But it does not look so good on a VGA or DBLPAL screen. I hope to change this soon.

Usage of Forbid() and Permit()

The AmigaOS exec routine Forbid() turns off multitasking, until Permit() is called to turn it back on again. This, of course, can be dangerous, so these routines are only supposed to be used for very short, temporary periods in which no errors are possible - usually only a couple of lines of simple code.

Istar uses Forbid() and Permit() for the following purposes:


Copyright (c) Andrew Basden 1999.