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- | A A T A A R R I **** S S T |
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- Question and Answer Bulletin June 1986
- Copyright (C) 1986 by Atari Corp. "all rights reserved"
- 1196 Borregas Ave., Sunnyvale, Ca. 94086
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Here are the latest questions from the Atari developers mailbag
- as answered by John Feagans, Director of Software Technology.
- Leave questions on Compuserve for PIN 70007,1072 or GO PCS57 for
- Atari developer SIG information.
-
-
- 1. Discussion
-
- We would like to clear up a bit of the confusion on the use of
- the Alcyon version 4.14 C compiler. The programs which are
- actually new in the system are cp, c0, and c1, the as68, and
- ar68. The Motorola FFP (libf) and the double precision math pack
- (libm) are upgraded and a new addition respectively. All the
- other tools and programs on the disks are the standard issue in
- the regular developer's kit. GEMLIB was modified slightly by
- Alcyon to include procedures needed by the new math libraries.
- In the future, everyone will be updated with a new linker.
-
- The files on the disks have been organized in a two disk system
- for C- development. There is some redundancy on the linker and
- compiler disks with regard to batch.ttp, wait, and rm. The
- header files for the AES and VDI are not included since you
- already have them on the standard kit. You may configure the
- .bat files any way you wish, but be especially vigilant to cf.bat
- and linkf.bat which are intended to work as a pair. cf.bat has
- the -f option which is telling the new c-compiler to use the
- Motorola fast floating point. If you mix cf.bat with link.bat,
- the first symptom you will see is "printf.o multiply defined." I
- have done this accidently with my keyboard that has a sticking
- "k" key. If you want to be safe, just make a batch file that
- compiles and links your file in one operation. Remember also
-
-
- _________________________________________________________________
- ATARI ST DEVELOPERS -1- June 1986
-
-
-
- Question and Answer Bulletin
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-
- that you must add stdio.h and ctype.h as before if you use those
- functions.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 2. BIOS
-
- Q: How can you initiate a screen dump from the keyboard?
-
- A: Hold down the <Alternate> key and press <Help>. Be sure you
- have done the correct printer installation if you are using a
- non-Atari printer capable of doing raster dumps. Repeat the key
- sequence to halt the print at any time. The best part of this
- feature is that you can activate it from any program even if it
- does not use GEM.
-
- Q: How do you turn off the cursor in a TOS application?
-
- A: Send the VT-52 escape to turn off the cursor. Look in the
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the BIOS for a complete description of all
- the escape codes.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 3. DOS
-
- Q: How do I install partitions I have created with the hard disk
- format program?
-
- A: Select one of the drive icons on the desktop. Move the mouse
- to the Options menu and select Install drive. Change the drive
- identifier to your choice and select OK. Be sure to do a Save
- desktop so that the installed drive will appear each time you
- boot.
-
- Q: How can I recover some files I accidently trashed?
-
- A: There is hope -- but not much. If you have not created a new
- file since your accident, you may be able to use a disk utility
- to view sectors and piece it back together. However, those
- sectors may be scattered all over your disk. The best medicine
- is prevention. Leave the confirm deletes option connected.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 4. VDI
-
- Q: Looking into the VDIBIND library, I saw that there were many
- functions which couldn't be found in VDIBIND.H. e.g. vro_cpyfm,
- vs_clip. What is the rason for not including these in VDIBIND.
- Can we include them or don't they work well?
-
- A: VDIBIND.H is not necessary because all functions return an
- integer value--if ever. All these functions are in the VDIBIND
-
-
- _________________________________________________________________
- ATARI ST DEVELOPERS -2- June 1986
-
-
-
- Question and Answer Bulletin
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-
- object library.
-
- Q: I was using vg_text to output a string. When I switched to
- line-a to output the characters of the string one character at a
- time it was slower -- why?
-
- A: When you pass a string to the VDI you are performing only one
- Trap or software interrupt. If you use line-a, you do a software
- interrupt--and all of the overhead--on each character you output.
- In the end, the same code outputs the pixels to the video RAM.
- In some cases, like this, VDI can exceed line-a.
-
- Q: What is the standard address of screen memory?
-
- A: Unlike older systems, the ST can have video display memory
- located anywhere as long as it is on 1k boundaries. Various
- device drivers may be loaded in at boot time so it is impossible
- to say that video memory has a fixed address. The only thing
- that can be said for sure about the location is that it is
- usually the high end of RAM.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 5. AES
-
- Q: Is it possible to track the mouse through the process of menu
- item selection? I need to change the appearance of items on the
- fly.
-
- A: No, this is not an option of the AES. The usual scenario is
- to stay in the evnt_multi until a menu_event message is
- returned.
-
- Q: How many parameters does the objc_edit command have?
-
- A: The correct number is five. The AES manual incorrectly states
- six.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 6. Desktop
-
- Q: I would like to know if information from the desktop.inf is
- available to normal applications. I have noticed that the
- control panel and VT 52 emulator accessories have access to this
- information.
-
- A: It is the responsibility of every application in the system
- to save and restore changes to system variables. We do not
- recommend an application going in to directly change the
- desktop.inf. There is a constant danger of user modifications
- causing damage to the system that cannot be supported. The best
- way to change colors is through the vdi. Modifying the hardware
-
-
- _________________________________________________________________
- ATARI ST DEVELOPERS -3- June 1986
-
-
-
- Question and Answer Bulletin
- _________________________________________________________________
-
-
- registers directly is also discouraged since you are locking your
- application to one version of ST hardware. There are also xbios
- entries for changing and inquiring printer and rs-232 data.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 7. BASIC
-
- Q: How can I access the RS-232 from BASIC?
-
- A: Where X is a character: For output use OUT 1,X and for input
- use X = INP(1).
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 8. Development Tools
-
- Q: The function itoa is not in the C-runtime libraries. What
- can I use for this function?
-
- A: If you have a special case where you need a small number of
- digits in a hurry, you can write a quick C function to convert an
- integer to ASCII characters. Another way is if you have included
- stdio, you can use sprintf to output an integer to a string.
-
- Q: We are having serious troubles with C. The functions getchar
- and stream reading does not work properly. In fact a German
- version has modified "stdio.h" definitions, (sic) though it works
- better has still problems.
-
- A: There is another version of stdio.h floating around Europe
- which uses a #define of getchar to be a BIOS Bconin(CON). This
- does not help the scanf function however. There is also a danger
- in using this version because when you mix Gem DOS calls (which
- the C run-time uses), and direct BIOS calls to get characters
- from the keyboard. A symptom of this has been noted as "10
- characters disappearing" as the DOS bufferes them up whenever a
- printf is called. The safest replacements for getchar and scanf
- are using Cconin and Cconrs+sscanf respectively.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- 9. New On Compuserve
-
- In data library 7 (for registered Atari Developers only) in the
- Atari Developers SIG on Compuserve, the following files are new
- this month:
-
- gemlib Works with both Alcyon versions.
- test.c Example using stdio to lst: and con:.
- qa4.doc May Q/A newsletter.
-
-
-
-
- _________________________________________________________________
- ATARI ST DEVELOPERS -4- June 1986
-
-
-
-
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- Ü⑤j¢ i✓àULÕ£Γsך∙S¼ÑR¼sõHFxùîלµ≤û③VOVףÜVןS⑧'89T≈vƒ!Yr
-
- Bugs in the ST Resource Construction Set
-
- The RCS originally shipped with the Atari Developers' Kit did not receive
- adequate testing, and as a result contains a number of bugs, two of which
- are show stoppers. Due to numerous questions on the SIG, and Tom Hudson's
- suggestion, I am documenting them here. (The statements here are my
- own, and have nothing to with Atari or DRI. Use them at your own risk.)
-
- Bug #1) The RCS does not work properly with color systems. The character
- size used is incorrect, resulting in objects which are twice as high as
- intended. The only solution is to use the RCS with a monochrome system only.
-
- Bug #2) When using icons or bit images, the RCS may produce a resource file
- which causes an address error on the 68000. This occurs because the RCS
- is not forcing the images to an even byte boundary. Since the images are
- written immediately after strings, any resource with an odd number of bytes
- in the string will suffer from this problem (if it contains images as well).
- To work around: make a copy of the resource BEFORE adding ANY images.
- Then add the images and attempt to save the resource from the RCS. If you
- get an error, restore from your backup, add one byte to any string, and try
- again. Whenever editing ANY string, do the same thing. ALWAYS keep a
- backup copy! By the time the RCS bombs, your resource is history!
-
- "Feature" #3) The icon format expected by the RCS is rather obscure,
- shall we say. This happened because the RCS expects to find icons written
- by the GEM IconEditor, which was never ported to the ST. If you want to
- "roll your own", an example of the correc
-