Info-Atari16 Digest Friday, September 15, 1989 Volume 89 : Issue 472 This weeks Editor: Bill Westfield Today's Topics: Re: Modula2 Re: TOS 1.4 bug? MIDI software for Atari ST Re: help Re: Packer vs. Squish Professional GEM #18 and following? request Text programs (HELP!!) Defragging with Norton Utilities v07INF4: Incorrect submission address in v07INF1 Re: Packer vs. Squish Re: Info-Atari16 Digest V89 #462 Uudecoding (can work) Re: Curious about "Rainbow" TOS Re: Rebuttal time ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Sep 89 19:20:00 GMT From: ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!glk01126@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu Subject: Re: Modula2 To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu It's very standard. I speak German, but didn't really ready the docs. If you unzoo it correctly, everything is in it's place. Just check out a modula-2 book from the library (what's that). It is a very good system. If you have any questions on the menu items just e-mail me the word, and I'll e-mail the translation. Most are understandable if one has limited intelligence. e.g. Kompilieren = Compile. -Spieu! ZZ ------------------------------ Date: 12 Sep 89 21:46:36 GMT From: imagen!atari!apratt@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Allan Pratt) Subject: Re: TOS 1.4 bug? To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu VBRANDT@DBNUAMA1.BITNET writes: >SYTANG%CSUGREEN.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU asks: > - You don't have to use FOLDR100 with the new TOS 1.4, unless you want to > access hundreds of folders in the same 'session'. I have to jump on this one: you don't need FOLDR100 unless you access hundreds of folders AT THE SAME TIME. When you open a file, the directories from the root of that drive down to that file are "in use." When you close the file, they're not "in use" any more, and the space is reclaimed. Better internal memory management like this, and some other things (like way faster FAT code and program launching), is why you should get TOS 1.4 in the first place. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 06:48:54 GMT From: grapevine!sgrimm%sun.com@sun.com (Steven Grimm) Subject: MIDI software for Atari ST To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu I bought a Yamaha PSR-47 keyboard yesterday, just to play around with some basic musicmaking. I'd really like to drive the thing from my Atari ST, too; can anyone recommend good software? If there's a public domain program, please submit it to comp.binaries.atari.st so I can take a look. (I'm sort of surprised there isn't something in the archive already -- with built-in MIDI ports, the Atari seems a natural candidate for good PD music software...) I'm willing to pay for a good program, too, so don't be shy about recommending your favorite commercial software. So far the only thing I've found to drive the synth is "Marble Madness," so I guess I've found that program's single redeeming feature ( :-) -- I wish they'd spent half the time on the ST version as they did on the Amiga one, but that's another article...) Followups directed to comp.sys.atari.st. --- This message is a figment of your imagination. Any opinions are yours. Steven Grimm Moderator, comp.sources,binaries.atari.st sgrimm@sun.com ...!sun!sgrimm ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 04:54:20 GMT From: gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!leah!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!marque!carroll1!dnewton@tut.ci s.ohio-state.edu (Dave Newton) Subject: Re: help To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <872@cuphub.cup.edu> kar7481@cuphub.cup.edu (HI HO-HI HO - IS UNIX THAT GREAT? YOU KNOW?) writes: >Is there anyone else out there on USENET with an ST??????? No, we just have a newsgroup. 8-) >GOAL: Introduce ST's to the collegiate environment via Spectre-GCR Mac Emultr. I've had direct dealings with Atari on the feasability on this. The basic feeling is it's a very good idea, get a STacy w/ GCR for a portable Mac. The concern most people have with this idea is the lack of an AppleTalk interface. this limits it's usefullness to a heavily-networked environment. It doesn't diminish the exciting prospects of this idea however. I spoke at length with the folks there, they said they hadn't really thought about it. (Find that hard to believe.) They are missing out on a great opportunity to get some of the brightest minds interested in their machines by not offering mass educational discounts (quantity one) like Apple and IBM (just started offering quantity one discounts recently I think). ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 05:12:13 GMT From: gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!texbell!uhnix1!uhnix2!uace0@tut.cis.ohio-state .edu (Michael B. Vederman) Subject: Re: Packer vs. Squish To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Thanks for the kind words Larry! DC Squish has been improved even further! Including a better SQUISH! But, I can't believe you forgot to mention that DC SQUISH also makes programs load faster for TOS 1.0 and TOS 1.2 (and if the FAST option is set for TOS 1.4 also). This reduction in load to execution time is not just by making the files smaller, either. DC SQUISH actually has the same effect (and thus eliminates the need for) as the popular program PINHEAD! But on a file by file basis. Crunch or Pack don't offer this, just reduced file size. BTW - with the newest version of DC SQUISH (which Larry will be receiving free-of-charge) approaches the compaction of Pack (and beats it some times) while still being significantly faster! - mike -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Double Click Me | Double Click Software | P.O. Box 741206 | Houston, Tx, 77274 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Support BBS: (713)944-0108 | SHADOW | DC FORMATTER | DC UTILITIES | and others ------------------------------ Date: Wed Sep 13 11:23:00 MET 1989 To: From: VCD51661%DS0RUS54.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu Subject: Professional GEM #18 and following? Hello, Netlanders! Most of the more experienced ones out there in the ST branch of the Netland community will know the famous "Professional GEM" series of articles by Tim Oren, published (electronically) by ANTIC. I personally know of 17 articles in this series. The last one, #17, deals with ST -> PC resource conversion. I have good reasons to believe that there are more articles available. Could some kind soul tell me if there exist more articles in this series and/or mail them to me (including the C code, if any)? Thanx for any help! /* ** Benno Salzgeber ** Institute for Computer Applications ** University of Stuttgart ** Pfaffenwaldring 57 ** D-7000 Stuttgart 80 (FRG) ** VCD51661@DS0RUS54.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 13:13:39 GMT From: eru!luth!sunic!ericom!tnetxa.ericsson.se!etxbatt@bloom-beacon.mit.edu Subject: request To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu volume1/intro volume1/arc volume1/uucode volume3/astro18 part01 part02 part03 volume3/gulam part01 part02 part03 part04 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 10:01:29 EDT From: David Megginson Subject: Text programs (HELP!!) To: Atari Newsgroup I need a text archiving and searching program like WordCruncher for the ST. I understand French, German and Spanish, and I can usually guess at Dutch or Scandinavian languages, so I don't care what country it's from. What do ST users do to manage large text databases, like back issues of magazines? Is there anything like WordCruncher available for the ST (I know we could do a lot better). Please send me any details you have. Thanks. David Megginson BITNET: MEGGIN@vm.epas.utoronto.ca ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Sep 1989 11:08 EDT From: Greg Csullog <01659%AECLCR.BITNET@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU> Subject: Defragging with Norton Utilities To: In reply to one netter's question, yes, someone (me) has used NU to defragment a disk. Works without a hitch on PC Ditto (my Ditto II is ordered). However, under Ditto I, a five meg partition can take over 1/2 hour to defragment. Thus, I set the wheels in gear while I go to lunch. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 15:11:34 GMT From: grapevine!koreth%panarthea.ebay%sun.com@sun.com (Steven Grimm) Subject: v07INF4: Incorrect submission address in v07INF1 To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu Submitted-by: koreth%panarthea.ebay@sun.com (Steven Grimm) Posting-number: Volume 7, Info 4 Archive-name: bad-address In the first article of volume 7, the binaries submission address was listed incorrectly. The relevant paragraph should read: Items intended for posting or queries and problem notes should be sent to atari-binaries%panarthea.ebay@sun.com. If you are on a UUCP-only site, you can send them to backbone!sun!ebay!panarthea!atari-binaries. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. And now, on to the programs! --- This message is a figment of your imagination. Any opinions are yours. Steven Grimm Moderator, comp.sources,binaries.atari.st sgrimm@sun.com ...!sun!sgrimm ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 13:39:46 GMT From: eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!unido!laura!trillian.irb!klute@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Rainer Klute) Subject: Re: Packer vs. Squish To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <861@uhnix2.uh.edu> uace0@uhnix2.UUCP writes: >... DC SQUISH actually has the same effect (and thus >eliminates the need for) as the popular program PINHEAD! I have never heard of PINHEAD. Which effect does it have? Rainer Klute ---- klute@trillian.irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Univ. Dortmund, IRB |)|/ klute@unido.uucp, klute@unido.bitnet Postfach 500500 |\|\ ...uunet!mcvax!unido!klute D-4600 Dortmund 50 ---- Tel.: +49 231 7554663 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 13:03:54 EST From: Todd Whitehead Subject: Re: Info-Atari16 Digest V89 #462 To: Info-Atari16@Score.Stanford.edu In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 13 Sep 89 01:52:10 PDT from re: Hard drive defragger Michtron makes an excellent package called hard drive turbo kit. I too had problems with dlII. The first time I tried it, it said my disk had errors on it. I went ahead and tried it and it trashed th partition. (I had a backup and reinstalled it with no problem, but I promplty dragged the program to the trashcan.) The next week I bought Hard Drive Turbo Kit, and checked my disk structure, got NO errors and optimized my hard drive, all three partitions, in less than half an hour (30 meg total, about 80% full). The prgram also lets me do three different types of disk backups, two of them are file-related and one of them is bit-image. The package also came with M-Cache. I highly recommend this program! It WORKS! Opinions are my own, as I don't work for anybody...not yet. Todd Whitehead Miami University Oxford, Ohio ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Sep 89 12:16:43 BST From: Mark Powell Subject: Uudecoding (can work) To: Atari mailing list Try using a decent uudecoder/encoder. UUD and it's counterpart UUE are the best, I find. UUE sticks a table of the 64 characters using in the uuencoding before the message. This is so that any site which swaps characters (e.g. the EBCDIC sites that usually swap % (tilde sorry EBCDIC sites) and ~ (caret) will also swap the characters in the table as well as in the message proper. UUE can also splits long encodes into multiple messages (if you like.) UUD looks at this table and decodes using the codes in the supplied table, thus decoding correctly (we hope). Even if you get a uuencoded file without a table that has had characters converted, UUD trys to decode it using the most obvious swaps that will occur i.e. the previously mentioned tilde and caret swap and also the space characters may get changed to ` (back single quotes.) This should decode almost any file. It also checks sequence markers on the ends of the lines, if present. If you haven't got uud or uue, get them before you moan about uudecoding problems. Most archives should have them. server@uk.ac.brad.marvin has them in C source form, it's a mail server just send it a message with "help" in it. They should also be in binary & source form on the panathea server. Mark Powell ARPA : sq79%liv.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk UUCP : ...!mcvax!ukc!liv.ac.uk!sq79 ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 18:36:36 GMT From: pepper!cmcmanis@sun.com (Chuck McManis) Subject: Re: Curious about "Rainbow" TOS To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <8909081454.AA05183@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> (Marcelino Bernardo) writes: >Recently I have read Ken Badertscher of Atari refer to TOS 1.4 as the >"Rainbow" TOS. I was just curious. Why was the this name chosen? I don't know of course but I have some ideas : Because you can see it but you can't touch it ? It's Sam's way of promising you that you won't ever be flooded with bogus product announcements? It's only visible on very wet days and from certain angles? Atari bought a bunch of DEC personal computers and this is the version of TOS that supports them? I'm sure there are lots of possibilities... --Chuck McManis uucp: anywhere!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. "If I were driving a Macintosh, I'd have to stop before I could turn the wheel." ------------------------------ Date: 13 Sep 89 18:10:15 GMT From: pepper!cmcmanis@sun.com (Chuck McManis) Subject: Re: Rebuttal time To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu In article <500@nixpbe.UUCP> mboen@nixpbe.UUCP (Martin Boening) writes: ->cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes: ->> .... ->>The keys are that you have to have a _window based_ UI because single ->>interface terminal UI's are generally not flexible enough for effective ->>use of multitasking .... -> ->Come again? I suppose most UNIX Systems then aren't really effective ->doing multitasking, what with all those stupid single interface terminal ->UI's called vt100 terminals. You managed to yank my comments completely out of context but you make the same point I made in my original article. You comment above is misguided though. The point I make is not that UNIX or any other multitasking OS is effective in what it does, but that for a single user to make the _most_ use of multitasking requires some sort of GUI. (Graphic User Interface) ->The idea is: multitasking is nice but you don't need window-based UI's. ->E.g. I start a make in the background, push whatever else comes to mind ->(such as some net statistics programs, TeX runs, etc.,into the background ->and then do some edditing in the foreground. For this, I don't necessarily ->need a window-based UI. Your right you don't, and you don't even need "true" multitasking either because any number of hacks would let you do the same. The key though is that you will notice you only have *one* interactive application running at a time on your VT100 because you can't *get* to any others. ->Same goes for multitasking on personal computers (let's avoid saying PC ->here, it's a much abused term :-)). It's nice to have a window_based UI ->(such as on the Amiga, but also such as MS-Windows!), but it's no neces- ->sity. This is especially true if all you do in the background is print ->spooling, disk formatting and compiling. What else do you do in the ->background? To have 10 editor sessions, you hardly need multitasking. ->All you need is TASK SWITCHING, because there's no concurrent processing ->involved. Ray tracing? Have it trace into a file which you can view later. ->Who cares to see a ray trace image SLOOOWLY unfold in a separate window ->while editing? Whoi can even look at that separate window between looking ->at the edit window and the text he (she) is typing. I left this text intact because it is pretty effective at making the point I tried to make. For the kinds of operations you mentioned you don't need multitasking at all, switching works just fine. What you apparently realize but don't mention is that if you want to run several *INTERACTIVE* applications at the same time there must be some way for you to identify which interactive application you are interested in communicating with *at a particular point* in time. Take as a contrived example, editing a document, possibly a response to an online debate, while watching that debate going on. This happens on any conferencing system such as BIX or CompuServe that has a "forum" type mode where several people can make comments in "real time". Generally to your "terminal" session this appears as a bunch of lines like : [joe-bob] Did you see Friday the 13th Part XXIV? [frieda] No, what was the plot? [joe-bob] What's a plot? These display the comments and their authors. In the editor you will want to type your response and then when it is ready squirt it out to the serial line. But it is _more effective_ to be able to watch what is going on while you are composing because you might otherwise seem foolish if your response echoes several previous responses. Another contrived example which is closer to home, suppose you were creating a video on your system. You have rendered the animation and now you want to add music and sound effects. Well you need to run both the sound effects editor/designer and the animation program at the same time. Primarily so that you can note frames in the animation, add sounds continue with the animation, play it back, repeat. You _could_ do this with task switching and a notepad, but it would be _more effective_ if you could run both on the screen at the same time. It certainly isn't a black and white issue, but the areas of interest are that "true" multitasking [which is defined to occur when every application running under the OS is the same whether it runs by itself or with another application] gives you the ability to have both *applications* running simultaneously, and the GUI lets you interact with them on the same screen. So if I could boil the point down to it's barest essentials it would be "A major benefit of multitasking is more effective use of the systems resources, and a major benefit of GUIs is more effective use of multitasking." --Chuck McManis uucp: anywhere!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. "If I were driving a Macintosh, I'd have to stop before I could turn the wheel." ------------------------------ End of Info-Atari16 Digest ************************** -------