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- 8-BIT ATARI INFECTED BY WINDOWS VIRUS!
- <link=g38.scr>S T A R N E T</l>
- New exciting project from Closer to Home
-
-
- The Atari 8-bit Desktop
-
- Windows arrives... How nice.. It fits on 122 tapes and due to the 6502 slowness
- it loads in three weeks. Naaah, not really. It's a new 8-bit desktop based on
- Windows system! Closer to Home brings a lot of exciting news for the 8-bit
- Atari. Their previous project was the UnZIP known from PC trabants.
-
- Here is an example of what the desktop looks like with artifacting turned on.
- While artifacting can be taken advantage of to get more colors for pictures, it
- absolutly kills an 80 column font. It even messes up 40 column fonts if you are
- not careful. This is what it looks like with artifacting on a TV.
-
-
-
- This is what it looks like with artifacting turned off. You loose the colors
- in the picture, but look at what you gain in the clarity of the 80 column font
-
-
-
- The desktop has three main subsystems. The drive navigator, the windows, and
- the object configurator. This is a screenshot of the first dialog screen of the
- Navigator.
-
-
-
- As you can see from the screen below, the Navigator supports cascading
- directory lists. It can actually display a full Sparta DOS 3.2x directory of
- 127 files at one time! This would normally take up over 5 regular Atari screens
-
-
-
- The Navigator understands many different file types. For example, if you click
- on a HIP file the desktop's HIP viewer will display the picture. Also, if you
- press the HELP key (page down in the emulator) you will get a helper menu that
- is roughly analogous to the right click menu of Win/95.
-
-
-
- As you can see the Navigator supports copy and paste operations.
-
- The next of the three subsystems we will quickly glance at is the Configure
- program. It is used for defining desktop objects and looks like this.
-
-
-
- The last of the three subsystems of the desktop is the Windows. Here are some
- screen shots of the Windows system of the desktop.
-
-
-
- Here are some of the features of the desktop:
-
- Configurable. You can specify which drives to use for it's objects and rasters.
- Soon to be added are additional configuration parameters so you can optimize
- your desktop setup.
-
- You can run almost any program from the desktop and then return back to the
- desktop. This includes desktop applications, regular applications, games, batch
- files, etc.
-
- If you run a program that locks you up, just reboot the computer and the
- desktop will return just as you had left it before you ran the offending
- program.
-
- It comes with tons of standard icons.
-
- Seamlessly integrate almost any Atari program in to the desktop.
-
- For programmers there is a standard library for accessing the desktop's
- objects and functions for MAC/65, CC65, Action!, and BASIC (MAC/65 and CC65 are
- done, Action! and BASIC coming soon). A software toggle that works on any Atari
- 8-bit computer to turn on or off artifacting. Artifacts should be turned off
- for text, but can be turned on for some types of graphic effects. (Partially
- implemented, full implementation is coming soon). The fastest and clearest 80
- column driver ever designed for the Atari 8-bit computer, bar none. By killing
- the artifact you attain razor sharp 80 column text and proportional fonts. Here
- are some additional screenshots of things I'm working on for the desktop. Check
- out a proportional font with artifacting turned on below.
-
-
-
- Now check out what the same font looks like without artifacting. Notice the
- huge difference in legibility
-
-
-
- Are you hungry for more? No problem, just check out the official
- "Closer to Home" www-site:
-
- http://cth.dtdns.net/
-
- -- --- --- ---- -- ------------------------------------------------------------
- CHOSNECK magazine contact us:
- we're listenin' 2 da voice of da scene! atarimsb@wp.pl
- ---------------------------------------------------------- ---- --- ---- ---- -
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