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Text File | 1991-06-06 | 15.7 KB | 363 lines

====================================== = ScreenMod v1.0 = = ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ = = Program and Documentation by: = = Syd L. Bolton = = = = Copyright ©1991 = = Legendary Design Technologies Inc. = = Freely Redistributable = ====================================== WHAT IS SCREENMOD? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ScreenMod is a small utility program that was developed primarily to change the position of a custom screen opened by another program. Some PAL utilities open their screens so low that most of the gadgets are unreachable by the mouse. Using a PAL-BOOT program doesn't always help the situation. Not everybody is able to permanently alter someone's executable code (especially if it's compressed in some form or another) and that is why ScreenMod came to life. ScreenMod allows you to change several parameters of any screen that has been opened. You can change the TOPEDGE parameter, and the LEFTEDGE parameter (although at the time of writing, changing the LEFTEDGE parameter of a screen has no effect since the operating system does not support it yet, but someday ...). You can even manipulate the display modes, such as HAM and HIRES, and adjust the palette of any screen -- even if it normally does not allow this. ScreenMod also allows you to save the changes you've made to a file, which can then later be called by a companion program called ScreenSet. This has been set up so that you can create a batch file to run your application program first, and then ScreenSet will put any of the changes you have made into effect. See the separate ScreenSet documentation for more details. GETTING STARTED WITH SCREENMOD ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ScreenMod can be run from the CLI or Workbench, although full Workbench support has not yet been implemented. Refer to the "FEATURES TO BE ADDED" section of this documentation for more details. When you first run ScreenMod it will open its own custom screen using 2 BITPLANES and a RESOLUTION of 640 X 200. The program contains an "ICONIFY" feature that will close the main screen and open a small window in the Workbench title bar. Normally, this feature is selected through the SPECIAL menu (or Right-Amiga-I) but ScreenMod can be told from startup to be iconified. To do this, when you run the program just specify the "small" option. For example: 1>screenmod small ^---- This parameter causes ScreenMod to start in an ICONIFIED state. With this release, starting up in an ICONIFIED state from Workbench is not possible. If the program is iconified, and you wish to return it to its full screen, you must do two things: 1) Activate the small ScreenMod window, by clicking the left button somewhere in the title bar. 2) Click the RIGHT BUTTON to tell ScreenMod to UN-ICONIFY. THE MAIN SCREEN ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a listing of all available screens that are currently opened. They are ordered the way the operating system orders screens: The front screen is listed first, and then the screen behind that one is next, and so on. Note that the "SCREENMOD" screen itself will ALWAYS be the first one on the list. You will see the NAME of the screen and the RESOLUTION. If the screen does not actually have a title, ScreenMod will put in "** NO NAME **" in it's place. To make an alteration to a screen, you first decide which screen you would like to change, and then click the left button on it's title on the left-hand side of the screen. The "settings" will all change accordingly on the right-hand side. THE PARAMETERS AND WHAT THEY MEAN ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ LEFT EDGE: The number of pixels the screen is offset from the left. Please note this feature is not currently implemented in the operating system, and changing its value will have no effect. It DOES however ask the operating system to make the change so when it is implemented, this program should still be compatible. TOP EDGE: This is one you may play with a lot. It indicates the number of raster lines (pixels) the screen is offset from the top of the display. For most screens this will be 0, but for some it will be another value. Try changing ScreenMod's value to say 10, and then REMAKE the screen. WIDTH: The width of the screen, in pixels. Note that playing with this parameter will NOT have many useful effects. If you make the WIDTH wider than what it normally is, ScreenMod does NOT allocate the extra memory that would be required. This would require closing all windows on the display, closing the screen, then re-opening it with the new memory allocation and then re-opening the windows -- a daunting task, especially if the programmer puts things other than standard INTUITEXT and GADGET structures on the screen (which most do). If someone has any thoughts on this, I would love to hear them. Perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to allocate the new memory and append it? HEIGHT: This is the height of the screen, in pixels. The same notes apply as to the WIDTH, above. Experimenting with this value can produce some interesting results though. DETAILPEN: This is the color register number that the operating system uses when drawing things like the title of the Screen. BLOCKPEN: This is the color register number that the operating system uses when drawing things like the background of the Screen Title. DEFAULT TITLE & TITLE: These are simply the name of the Screen. Keep in mind that often times the ACTUAL name of the screen is covered up by a window. ScreenMod will have no effect on WINDOW titles, only SCREEN titles. Secondly, some programs have turned the screen title OFF to allow a fuller display on the screen (for titling programs and so on). ScreenMod will ONLY UPDATE THE TITLE if the program has allowed the SCREEN TITLE TO SHOW. DEFAULT FONT: This is the default font that this screen uses, but is not currently supported in this release. And now for the VIEW MODE flags: HIRES: This flag should be turned ON if the screen width is greater than 320 pixels. INTERLACE: This flag should be turned ON if the screen height is greater than 200 pixels. However, it will produce an interesting effect if turned on when the screen is 200 pixels or less. SPITES: This flag should be turned ON if this screen is to use hardware sprites. DUALPF: This flag should be turned ON if this screen uses dual playfields. Dual playfields are often used in games where a "window" is necessary, like for example the window of an aircraft. One playfield contains the cockpit and the other playfield contains a view of the sky and/or ground. When combined, the user sees the cockpit playfield which is in front, and sees the sky/ground view playfield ONLY where the "window" of the cockpit is. HAM: This flag should be turned ON if the screen in question should be in HAM mode (4096 colors). EXTRA_HALFBRITE: This flag should be turned ON if this program is to use the extra 32 colors available in EXTRA HALFBRITE mode. *** NOTE: *** Just because ScreenMod lets you modify the state of these flags it does NOT mean that the program running with that screen will take advantage of the changes. For example, you can't make DPAINT work in HAM MODE just by changing the status of the screen. They are changeable for experimentation purposes only although you may find some programs that do neat things because of the changes you make. VIEW SCREEN: By clicking this gadget, whatever screen you have highlighted from the list will be moved to the front. To get back to the ScreenMod screen, do one of two things: 1) Press any key on the keyboard 2) Click the RIGHT button. Clicking the LEFT BUTTON will cause that screens windows to become active, and then the only way back to the ScreenMod screen will be with the LEFT-AMIGA-M and LEFT-AMIGA-N keys. ADJUST PALETTE: This one is quite useful. It will bring the selected screen to the front and open a palette adjuster screen, which originally was written by Carolyn Schepper of Commodore, and subsequently modified. Make any necessary palette changes, and hit CANCEL or OK and you will be brought back to the ScreenMod screen. NOTE: Adjusting the palette is the only modification to a screen that is IMMEDIATE. All other parameters will not be changed until you hit REMAKE SCREEN. UPDATE LIST: This gadget causes ScreenMod to re-read the list of screens in memory. Use this feature when you have run another program that opens up its own screen and you want to tell ScreenMod about it. REMAKE SCREEN: This one will put all of your changes into effect. BE CAREFUL!!! Some changes could potentially cause a system crash although I never actually had it happen to me I have no doubt that playing with some screens will cause some programs to upchuck and die. NEVER play with ScreenMod without having any important files saved to disk. THE MENUS ~~~ ~~~~~ Project ~~~~~~~ SAVE SETTINGS: This will bring up a window where you can type in a filename that you would like ScreenMod to save all of the changes you have made so that they can be put into effect later with ScreenSet. HELP: This will bring up a simple reminder of the keyboard keys in the program, which are listed below. ABOUT: This tells you author and copyright information. QUIT: You guessed it! Let's you shut down ScreenMod. Special ~~~~~~~ ICONIFY: This feature will close the ScreenMod screen and open a small window on the Workbench screen in the title bar. It will lie dormant until you activate the window (left button click) and then press the right button. Once this happens, the full screen will open back up. To have the program start ICONIFIED, specify the parameter "SMALL" from the CLI (as in "1>screenmod small"). KEYBOARD EQUIVALENTS ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ The following keys have been activated to do the same job as some of the gadgets to make you keyboard fanatics happy: R - REMAKE SCREEN U - UPDATE LIST A - ADJUST PALETTE V - VIEW SCREEN There is also a special key not available through a gadget: ESC - Will reset ScreenMod's parameters. I put this in because I found that sometimes when playing with ScreenMod's screen you could make it impossible to reach some of the gadgets (this is also why I added keyboard support) but if you really do some damage, pressing ESC will RESET everything to normal. WHAT THIS PROGRAM ISN'T ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ This program was not designed to replace the fine utility ScreenX by Steve Tibbett. If you want to PRINT SCREENS and SAVE SCREENS to IFF, use ScreenX. It would be possible to add these features easily to this program but I see no point in redoing what someone has already more than adaquetely accomplished. If however, you would like to see these features (or others added) please let me know. Make sure you consult my "FEATURES TO BE ADDED" list first. HOW THIS PROGRAM WORKS ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ The concept of how this program works is quite simple. ScreenMod simply asks the operating system about the Screens in memory, and stores their structures in an array. Through the use of INTUITION, it lets you modify these structures and put the changes into effect. I discovered however that just modifying the screen structure wasn't always good enough. For example, in order to change the LEFT EDGE and TOP EDGE parameters, both the SCREEN structure has to be modified, and the associated VIEW PORT parameters must also be changed. A call to the "RemakeDisplay" function in the operating system takes care of the rest. If you are a programmer, try taking out the changes to the VIEW PORT structure, and watch what effect changing the TOP EDGE parameter has. It is QUITE interesting. HOW THIS PROGRAM WAS WRITTEN ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ This program was developed on an Amiga 1000 with 2.5MB of RAM, using CygnusED Professional Editor, from ASDG. This program was compiled using MANX AZTEC C V5.0. The interface was designed using POWERWINDOWS 2.5 from INNOVATRONICS. FEATURES TO BE ADDED ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~ Eventually, I would like to add some of the following features to this program. If you're ambitious, maybe YOU would could add them for me (or not). 1) Allow modification of the DEFAULT FONT, and add SIZE. Actually perform a call to OpenFont or OpenDiskFont, so that all SUBSEQUENT changes in the program would be in the new font. 2) Make ScreenSet work with PROJECT ICON's from Workbench. 3) Allow the program to start out ICONIFIED from Workbench (add a tool type such as STARTUP=SMALL and STARTUP=NORMAL or something like that). 4) Allow control over bitplanes and actually re-allocate (or de-allocate) any necessary memory (for width & height changes as well). 5) Make ScreenMod relenquish it's task so that just typing it's name from the CLI would return the prompt. 6) Add a "TIMEOUT" feature to ScreenSet so that the Screen in question does not have to be opened at the time ScreenSet is run. 7) Allow ScreenSet to work on multiple screen changes. 8) Either add to this program, or write a NEW program that allows this same type on manipulation over Windows. WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~ Look soon for Legendary Design Technologies Inc. to be producing some commerical software. The following titles are being worked on and might be available "someday". 1) INVESTMENT ANALYZER - people complain not enough business software is available for the Amiga. This one allows you to calculate ACTUAL rate of return on investments, regardless of what types of commissions or front-load fees are applied. Works with any kind of investment, but most useful with Mutual funds. 2) FRACTAL CONSTRUCTION SET - Yes more fractals! But this one does animation like a breeze, will save in ANIM format directly, and is a complete tutor about fractals. Not only does it support Mandelbrot and Julia sets, but Peano curves, Snowflake curves and so on and on! 3) KWIKCHANGE UTILITIES - We have already developed a converter to change PAGERENDER 3D files to VIDEOSCAPE 3D files and vice versa. Allows QUICK RENDER preview of the object in 3D, and will do multiple files at once. ** THIS PRODUCT IS FINISHED -- IF YOU WOULD LIKE FURTHER INFO PLEASE CALL OR WRITE **. We have also developed a package that will take PRINTMASTER PLUS files and allow you save individual files as IFF, or take IFF files and convert them to PRINTMASTER PLUS format. Also supports PRINTSHOP from the Commodore 64 (both COMMODORE and NON-COMMODORE graphic files). Supports IBM PM PLUS files too! Will rotate and reverse the images as well, and includes a simple graphics editor. Again, call or write for more details. 4) MARKS MASTER - The ultimate marks program for teachers. Includes graphs, homeroom IDs, attendance sheets and so on. Even supports POSTSCRIPT printers. 5) We are working on an incredible 3D system that can TRULY handle curves. Any of you ever seen ALIAS? ... I'll say no more... 6) A multi-level fantasy adventure game. 3D perspective, great sounds, auto-mapping and save game feature. 32 incredibly nasty monsters will hinder your way, each with different intelligence and strategy. 7) We are working on developing games for the Atari Lynx portable game system. I know, I know. ATARI. But remember, the development system uses an Amiga and the thing was designed partly by Dave Needle and RJ Mical of Amiga-fame. Uses a modified 6502 which makes us original Commodore 64 assembly language programmers right at home! 8) We are also working on getting some sleep! HOW TO REACH US ~~~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~~ Legendary Design Technologies Inc. 25 Frontenac Avenue Brantford, Ontario CANADA N3R 3B7 (519)-753-6120 (519)-754-4059 FAX Have a heck of a day! -Syd Bolton, President.