ftp.pasteur.org/FAQ/

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ ftp.pasteur.org/FAQ/ / ftp-pasteur-org-FAQ.zip / FAQ / amiga / introduction / part3 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1996-04-12 | 34.9 KB | 828 lines

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!uni-regensburg.de!lrz-muenchen.de!informatik.tu-muenchen.de!kellerer From: kellerer@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Ignaz Kellerer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction,comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.programmer,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: Amiga FAQ (Frequently asked questions) (Part 3 of 4) Supersedes: <AmigaFAQ-3-824230821@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.introduction Date: 9 Apr 1996 16:00:30 GMT Organization: InternetNews at TUM, Technical University of Munich, Germany Lines: 804 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Distribution: world Expires: Sunday, 12 May 96 18:00:24 MESZ Message-ID: <AmigaFAQ-3-829065624@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> References: <AmigaFAQ-1-829065624@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> Reply-To: kellerer@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Ignaz Kellerer) NNTP-Posting-Host: hphalle3g.informatik.tu-muenchen.de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Summary: Frequently asked questions on the Amiga. New users should read this! Originator: kellerer@hphalle3g.informatik.tu-muenchen.de Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.sys.amiga.introduction:9130 comp.sys.amiga.misc:118853 comp.sys.amiga.programmer:89233 comp.answers:18066 news.answers:69087 Posted-By: auto-faq 2.4 Archive-name: amiga/introduction/part3 Last-modified: Tuesday, 9. March 1996 Posting-Frequency: ever fourth week Frequently asked questions (FAQ) concerning the Amiga. [3/4] ------------------------------------------------------------ This is the third part of the Amiga-FAQ. It is in Ascii format to be easily read by everyone. It is also available in AmigaGuide, Dvi and html (for WWW servers) format as part of the Amiga-FAQ archive. (File docs/misc/AmigaFAQ.lha on any Aminet site) Please note the following: - Changes since the last posting are marked with a ! changed this line/section, respectively + added this line < removed something before this line - An index is at the bottom of this part. If this still doesn't help: E-mail me, probably I can include an answer into the FAQ. - Suggestions, contributions, critics and beer bottles are very welcome. :-) Send them to: Ignaz Kellerer Georg-Habel-Str. 11 81241 Muenchen (Germany) Tel. (+49) 089 / 885147 Internet: kellerer@informatik.tu-muenchen.de ===========================(Cut here)========================================= Disclaimer 1 CPU, Custom chips, RAM and other stuff 1 What are 68EC020, 68EC030 and 68LC040? 2 What's an FPU? 3 Can I use a 3.5' HD in my A1200? 2 The Operating System 1 Can I use another Kickstart than the builtin? 2 The Graphical User Interface 3 What is MUI? 1 Icon collections and Backgrounds 4 What is the Amiga equivalent of . (Current directory)? 5 The PIPE: queue-handler 1 Using PIPE: in a standard AmigaShell environment 2 The Pipe command 3 Pipe command support in AmigaShell 4 Quick usage guide 5 Related things 6 Troubleshooting 6 ARexx, the program control language 3 How about Graphics? 1 What are chunky and planar displays? 2 What is doublebuffering? 3 What monitors will work on my Amiga 1200/4000? 4 How do I switch between PAL and NTSC? 4 Programming 1 What documentation do I need as an Amiga programmer? 2 What is CATS? 3 Where do I get the Amiga includes? 4 How do I become a developer? 5 What compilers (assemblers) are there? 6 Those never working Esc sequences! 7 Is it possible to use AmigaBasic on the A1200? 8 How do I localize my program? 9 How to obtain a pointer to a console's window 10 What are pragmas? 11 My Compiler/Linker is complaining about missing symbol xxx. 12 Where do I find the function xxx? 13 The GNU C compiler: general information and installation 1 Current Version 2 Requirements 3 Authors 4 Sources for Gcc 5 Inline Headers 6 Amiga Libraries 7 Installation 8 Compiling 9 How to get help 5 Applications 1 Text Editors 2 What word processors are there? 3 Desktop Publishing 4 What is TeX and where can I get it? 5 Are there any Postscript interpreters? 1 Amiga Font Formats 2 Frequently Requested Amiga Fonts 3 Commercial Font Sources 4 Non-Latin fonts on the Amiga 5 Amiga Font Installation 6 Amiga Font Utilities 7 Making Outline Fonts 8 Problems and Possible Solutions 6 How to deal with Non-Latin texts? 1 Japanese editors and viewers 2 Chinese text viewers 6 Connecting your Amiga to the world 7 Emulators 1 Can I run Unix on my Amiga? 2 Is it possible to use the Amiga as X11 terminal? 3 Is there a way to start MS-Dos programs? 4 How to mount MsDos-formatted Syquests on Amiga 8 Miscellaneous 1 Is there any unix version of LhA? 2 What are files ending with ...? 3 Is there a Stacker-like utility to pack my hard drive? 4 Where do I get Fish disk xxx? 9 Where and how do I get software and other informations? 1 Files and databases on freely distributable software 2 A collection of tests 3 Getting files from a FTP server 4 Getting files from a Mail server 5 Getting files from a mailbox 6 The Fish PD series 1 The Amiga Library disks 2 The Fresh Fish CD-Roms 7 How do I Read and write MS-Dos disks? 8 How do I split large files? 9 Discussing things 10 Other FAQ's The Amiga-FAQ archive Contributions Credits Index 5 Applications ************** This chapter offers informations about major Applications. 5.1 Text Editors ================ Text Editors are programs allowing to enter and edit unformatted text. Generally, this means text that is meant to be manipulated by machine, rather than human. Programmers use these to enter the text for compilers. Since UNIX machines don't typically have word processors, most text processing starts with a text editor, then is filtered through a page layout system (TeX, for example) to produce attractive paper results. *Commercial Products* CygnusEd Professional and TurboText seem to be the main contenders in the professional realm. The Fred Fish disks contain dozens of other shareware text editors. A demo version of TurboText is on Fish disk 445. A very old demo of CygnusEd is on Fish disk 95 (testament to its lasting-power). In the following some freely distributable editors will be discussed. *Emacs* Gnu Emacs (the "G" is not silent) comes from Unix and is probably the king of editors - it's huge (about 1 Megabyte), feature-packed (it does windows and even contains a game!) and extensible (if you know lisp you can write new emacs functions and bind them to any key combination). On the other hand, it may be too huge, its feature-ladenness is imposing, and its extensibility often means you can't use someone else's emacs configuration. Source: Aminet (directory `util/gnu'). *Vi* The leaner, less configurable, non-extensible cousin to gnu emacs is vi (pronounced "vee eye"). Unix people like vi especially because you find it on *any* Unix machine. What you choose is personal preference, and will mark you for life. Vim is a good vi for the amiga, and is on Fish disk 591 or in the `util/gnu' directory of Aminet. *DME* Many Amiga programmers like DME. It's fast, fully configurable; menus may be created and any key may be mapped. It's much easier to learn DME than than Emacs or Vi. There are three different versions: AmokEd, DME and XDME. It's a matter of opinion which you prefer. (Oberon and Modula programmers like AmokEd because it's written in Oberon and supports AmigaOberon error messages, C programmers like DME or XDME.) Sources: Aminet (directory `util/edit'), Fish disk 776 (XDME) and 749 (AmokEd), AMOK 90. 5.2 What word processors are there? =================================== A word processor is the typical application for writing notes, letters or reports on a computer. Unless you prepare newsletters on a weekly basis, your word procesor is probably your workhorse program. Thus choosing one you are comfortable with determines how comfortable you are with your computer. Word processors can offer a variety of features, and many can approach the sophistication required for Desktop Publishing (see DTP) but no one uses them for programming, for which text editors are more suited. One distinguishes between Wysiwyg programs (What you see is what you get) and page layout languages. Wysiwyg programs should be fast, comfortable and easy to use. Most people prefer them. The alternative is an approach that works similar to compilers. You feed text files to a a program that produces the layout which may be previewed on screen or printed. LaTeX takes this approach. See TeX. Lout is another such system which seems smaller, easier to learn and has full documentation included, but it is nonstandard. Lout produces Postscript output. (I don't know if this is an advantage or disadvantage. ;-) See Postscript. Both programs are freely distributable. There are a lot of wysiwyg programs, but only commercial products: FinalWriter, Final Copy II, Wordworth, Word Perfect, AmiWrite, Beckertext II, Maxon Word and many others. I don't dare to recommend any. All I can say is: Give yourself time to make a selection. 5.3 Desktop Publishing ====================== These programs offer features lacking in word processors, usually tailored to flexible arrangement of text, but often don't provide all of the text manipulation that a good word processor provides. The best desktop publishing programs strive to provide the features of both, just as the best word processors strive to provide the features of desktop publishing programs. Microsoft Word (Mac, PC) is a good example of a word processing program that offers many page layout feature. Framemaker (UNIX, Macintosh, DOS, etc.) is an example of a desktop publishing system that offers most needed word processing functions. As yet, no Amiga program has bridged the gap, though the main word processors are coming close. (On the other hand, even many sophisticated programs don't support typesetting mathematics, tables, producing bibliographies, indexes, or cross-references. The page layout languages do, and programs like Frame are improving their support of such features.) Unless you need to prepare fancy newsletters or promotional literature, a word processing program is probably enough. See Word Processors. There are not yet any freely distributable wysiwyg desktop publishing systems. Commercial products are ProPage and PageStream. They have been playing leapfrog for the past few years. It appears that PageStream 3.0 is about to leap ahead. A more detailed description of these products and their differences is welcome. Both programs' list prices are $299. Student discounts are available (approx 40% discount.) 5.4 What is TeX and where can I get it? ======================================= TeX is a very powerful wordprocessing system. It can display mathematical formulas or complex tables as well as function graphs, creates indices, contents and many other things. Its greatest advantage is that it is freely distributable (TeX, not the previewers and the printer drivers!) and that you find TeX all over the world on every computer family. Its greatest disadvantage is that it isn't very handy (works similar to a compiler) and it isn't wysiwyg. But many people like it. (BTW: This document is written using TeX. 8-) See Word Processors. There are two major implementations on the Amiga. The first one, Amiga-TeX, from Thomas Rockicki and Radical Eye software is commercial. It is said to be excellent and his owners seem to be very satisfied. But it costs at least 200$. I recommend PasTeX, a freely distributable version. People seem to have problems installing PasTeX, especially the font loading and generation (It's a quite complex program.) but I did not here anyone upset once it was installed. (A friend with knowledge of TeX helps immensely.) A few words should be said what you need: * 5 disks containing the TeX-compiler itself * 2 disks containing MetaFont * Nothing more J÷rgen Grahn has written a short essay on how he personally did to make LaTeX work on his Amiga. It's on Aminet as `text/tex/UsingLaTeX.lha'. Many people ask for fonts. They are included in the MetaFont-package and can get compiled by you. All you need to do is setting up your TeX-system in the right way which is described in the documentation. Please note that the PasTeX disks are compressed using the program Zoom. (see Endings) Sources: FTP at `ftp.uni-passau.de', directory `/pub/amiga/tex/PasTeX1.3' and the Fish CDs. 5.5 Are there any Postscript interpreters? ========================================== PostScript is a programming language designed to be used to describe printing on pages. Apple helped make PostScript popular by selling printers with built in PostScript interpreters. Many programs have evolved to produce PostScript programs as their output, making PostScript the lingua franca of printing. Until recently, in order to print a PostScript file, you had to have a relatively expensive laser printer. The development that changed this was the software PostScript interpreter. These programs allow your computer to interpret PostScript programs, and produce the matrix of dots to send to your normal graphics printer. One of the benefits of PostScript is that it is resolution independent. What this means is that it can support the highest resolution of your device - and that you can reasonably preview PostScript on a low resolution screen. There are two free PostScript interpreters for the Amiga. Post and Ghostscript. Post comes as an Amiga shared library along with front ends for previewing to the screen and printing. This structure allows others to write programs that can show PostScript images on screen. In fact, AmigaTeX uses Post's library to support incorporation of PostScript into documents. Ghostscript similarly comes in two programs, but not as a shared library. Ghostscript is the rendering engine, and Ghostview is the front end. Sources: Aminet (directorys `text/print' and `text/dtp'), Fish disk 669 Font Concepts ============= The Amiga is able to use two different concepts of fonts. First of all there are the bitmap fonts. These fonts are created by drawing a letter pixel for pixel onto the screen. The advantage is that they look good at small sizes, but are not very good for printout. Also they don't look very good when you change their size. Therefore you have to recreate the font for each size. Second there are the vector fonts. They are created by curves which are stored as mathematical formula. This has the advantage that changing the sizes does not effect the output. But this only applies for larger sizes and print-outs. Vector fonts also use less memory. 5.5.1 Amiga Font Formats ------------------------ 1. Agfa IntelliFont (suffix: .type or .lib) is the native font format on the Amiga. You can use it in any application and it can be converted to the standard bitmap format using the system utilities `IntelliFont' (OS 3.x) or `Fountain' (OS 2.x). 2. Postscript Type 1 fonts can be used within many applications, it can be used in every word processor and DTP program. There are two versions of the Type 1 format: Binary and ASCII (suffix: .pfb & .pfa). The Amiga software uses the Binary format, but you can easily convert them with TypeSmith or some PD software products (z.B. PFB2PFA) . In Addition to the files mentioned above, there are the metrics files with the suffixes .afm or .pfm. They contain information about the size (width) of the letters and most programs expect this file to be in the same directory as the font file. 3. Postscript Type 3 fonts (suffix: .ps or nothing) are not often used on the Amiga, but some applications do support this font format (e.g. PageStream). There are also some download utilities from PD sources available. 4. Truetype fonts (suffix: .ttf) are not very common on the Amiga, there is one word processor supporting this format (Wordworth 3.0). Due to the lower quality of the format, Amiga users tend to use higher quality for their DTP, DTV and word processing... There are also two formats: Mac & Windows available. The Amiga software is able to use the Windows format. 5. DMF fonts is the privat format of PageStream (suffix: .dmf), since PageStream is the market leader in DTP programs on the Amiga, so this format is very common! 6. Bitmap fonts (suffix: .font and numbers in a directory by the name of the font, sometimes .otag when converted from IntelliFont) were used in the OS 1.x, but have been replaced by the superior IntelliFont Format in OS 2.0. Under 2.0 or higher you still are able to use the bitmap fonts for small sizes, but for printouts you should use the IntelliFont format or any other vector font format mentioned above. 7. Colour Bitmap fonts (same suffixes as Bitmap Fonts, but the numbers have in addition a C, e.g. 35C) are also very common on the Amiga, they are mainly used for DTV applications, like the Video Toaster and Scala. 5.5.2 Frequently Requested Amiga Fonts -------------------------------------- 1. First place to look for fonts is the AMINET archive. This is the biggest archive of Amiga software and there you will find also quite a lot of fonts. The Aminet consists of many mirrors around the world. Here are some of them: 1. ftp.wustl.edu, 2. ftp.luth.se, 3. ftp.eunet.ch, 4. ftp.uni-paderborn.de, 5. ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk. Just log in as ftp and go to the directory /pub/aminet/text/font. 2. Another good ftp server to look is the CICA-server: 1. ftp.cica.indiana.edu To this server are also some mirrors around the world available. 3. Also a good place to look for is the following WWW server: 1. http://jasper.ora.com/Internet-Font-Archive.html 4. Another good place is the Fresh Fonts I CD-ROM, there you will almost certainly find some nice fonts. The CD is available from 1. Fred Fish / Amiga Library Services (orders@amigalib.com) 2. Stefan Ossowski / Schatztruhe GmbH The CD is for free when buying another CD from that company. You can also access the HTML pages on the CD under the following address: 1. http://macke.gris.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de:4711/~damor/ 5.5.3 Commercial Font Sources ----------------------------- Commercial fonts can be obtained from a number of different companies, including the large font houses: Adobe, Font Haus, Font Company, Bitstream, and Monotype. At these companies, fonts cost about $40 for a single face, and must be purchased in packages. Adobe, Bitstream, and Monotype also sell pre-designated type collections for slightly lower prices. There are also a lot of PD reseller who have a vast quantity of fonts, check out your local Amiga magazin for more information. Please consult the vendor list for a more complete list of vendors. 5.5.4 Non-Latin fonts on the Amiga ---------------------------------- Due to the really bad information policy by C= there was actually no information about non-latin fonts. But still it is possible to use them, without difficulty. You just have to get yourself some additional files. First of all you need the non-latin font files. There is a large selection of them on the Fresh Fonts CD-ROM mentioned above. In order to use the non-latin font files, you have to get yourself the appropriate keymap file, this will remap the keys on the keyboard to the appropriate letters of the foreign alphabet, e.g. in order to use a Russian font, you should set the russian keymap file in the preferences (via PREFS/INPUT). Not only that you can write with a non-latin alphabet, you can also localize your workbench. How about a Greek workbench or a Hebrew workbench? Have a look into the AMINET archive (mentioned above) for these files! In addition to this you can easily use Hebrew & Arabic in any word processor incl. writing from right-to-left! This can be easily done by setting the kerning value to negative values (like this the cursor moves left and not right) and moving the characters into the negativ part! You can get fonts from me with this feature! 5.5.5 Amiga Font Installation ----------------------------- The installation of Postscript, DMF and Truetype fonts is described by the application that use them. Please refer to the manuals of the software packages. The installation of IntelliFonts is very easy. Just start `IntelliFont' (OS 3.x) or `Fountain' (OS 2.x) and follow the guidelines from within the program. In order to install bitmap fonts, either copy them to the logical device FONTS: or assign the directory with your bitmap fonts: ASSIGN Fonts: <your_directory> ADD Right after this you can start your application and use them. When using non-latin fonts, don't forget to set the appropriate keymap file! 5.5.6 Amiga Font Utilities -------------------------- 1. IntelliFont IntelliFont is the system program by OS 3.x which lets you install Agfa IntelliFonts and converts them to bitmap fonts. The program is located in the drawer `SYS:System/'. For more information read your Workbench 3.x manual. 2. Fountain Is the preceding program to IntelliFont and comes with the now obsolete OS 2.x. Please read the section about Fountain in your Workbench 2.x manual. 3. PFB2PFA This neat little utility lets you convert Postscript Binary files to Postscript ASCII files. This is needed in order to use DOS & Amiga Adobe Type 1 fonts on the Mac! 4. CacheFont This great program caches the fontlist for you, in order to save a huge amount of time. The program looks for all fonts available on the system and creates a special cache-file on disk. 5. TypeSmith This is the best font converter on the Amiga, besides this function it is also a full blown font editor (see below) :-). The program is able to convert between: 1. Truetype 2. DMF 3. Adobe (Type 1 & 3) 4. IntelliFont 5. Bitmap (Amiga, Adobe, DMF) 5.5.7 Making Outline Fonts -------------------------- This is very, very difficult. Many people imagine that there are programs that will simply convert pictures into fonts for them. This is not the case; most fonts are painstakingly created by drawing curves that closely approximate the letterforms. In addition, special rules (which improve hinting, etc.) mandate that these curves be drawn in specific ways. Even designing, or merely digitizing, a simple font can take hundreds of hours. The easiest way of learning how to create fonts, is to have a look at existing fonts and try to change some letters. Given that, there are two major programs used for font design on the Amiga, TypeSmith 2.5 ($150) and FontDesigner ($100). These programs will allow you to import scanned images, and then trace them with drawing tools. The programs will then generate Adobe type 1, 3, TrueType, AGFA Intellifont, DMF and Bitmap fonts for either the Amiga, the Macintosh or the IBM PC. They will also generate automatic hinting. They also open previously constructed outline fonts, allowing them to be modified, or converted into another format. As far as I know, there are no shareware programs that allows you to generate outline fonts. There are also two programs for creating bitmap fonts. Personal Fonts Maker and Calligrapher. The second one has not been updated for several years, but it still is a good tool to work with. The first Program was created by adding some features to a good bitmap paint program (Personal Paint). There are some shareware tools to create bitmap fonts which you can convert to outline (vector) fonts with TypeSmith. 5.5.8 Problems and Possible Solutions ------------------------------------- 1. Pagestream does not recognize your newly installed font. This happens when you have two fonts with the same ID. The solution is to load such a font into a font editor and enter a new ID for one of the fonts. Still it might happen that you choose another one, that has already been used by! 2. Your application does not find the IntelliFont. This happens when you haven't set the locigal device FONTS: to your drawer. You can change this by typing the following command into your SHELL or add this line to your `S:User-Startup' file: ASSIGN Fonts: <your_drawer> ADD 3. You're using a non-latin font and the wrong characters appear when typing. This happens when you forget to set the appropriate keymap file. Enter the Prefs directory and start the program `INPUT'. There you can choose your keymap file. 5.6 How to deal with Non-Latin texts? ===================================== Currently I know only programs for read japanese and chinese texts. Siepieau Pang (siepiau@gbamail.mincom.oz.au) 5.6.1 Japanese editors and viewers ---------------------------------- ANS (Amiga Nihongo System) version 1.0, produced by SoftHouse Tecnode 102 Coupo Izumi 1-4-5 Houya-shi Izumi-machi Tokyo 202 JAPAN and distributed in Japan by MIQ Japan, Ltd. has been released in Japan. It offers a Japanese environment for Commodore Amiga users, is compatible with Amiga DOS 2.0 (works fine with version 1.3, too), and requires at least 1MB RAM (more recommended). ANS features Japanese windows/menus (these replace the English menus), 12 and 24 dot-matrix Japanese fonts, Jinput/Joutput (both constitute a Japanese front-end processor), XEDmini (a simple Japanese text editor with built-in font editor, and can be used as a Japanese terminal), a kana-to-kanji conversion dictionary for XEDmini and Jinput, Jfilter (for viewing Japanese files while connected to an MS-DOS console), and utilities for Japanese code conversion and communication. Note that XEDmini uses pcj (Japanese version of pcd) for communications, and that one can do binary uploads/downloads while working on files). I hear that it is reasonably priced, and very easy to use. JemTeX is a preprocessor that turns a Japanese text file (i.e., a TeX file with Japanese text) into a standard (La/Mu)TeX file. The archive (zipped) comes with the jis2mf utility along with a 24-dot bitmapped kanji font and a program for generating kanji tables. With jis2mf you can make metafont files out of the bitmapped font. JemTeX v2.0 will compile on an Amiga using SAS/C, or on a UNIX machine using gcc. This program is available at the FTP site utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (133.11.11.11). JemTeX v2.0 was written by Francois Jalbert (jalbert@iro.umontreal.ca or jalbert@cs.ubc.ca). The following are PD viewers on Aminet (text/show directory) JIStoJi by Bart Mathias automatically identifies electronic texts written in Old-JIS, New-JIS, Shift-JIS, or EUC-JIS (as well as ASCII) and displays them on screen, or prints them to dot-matrix printers. Will run on Kickstart 1.3 and up. jmore (Japanese more) is basically a more clone that also reads ns-kanji (Shift-JIS) text. It opens its own hires interlaced screen and requires a font handler called jFontSys to be running. The archive includes jmore, jFontsys and the wlook/16 bitmap font. However, you will also need the kanji fonts. (Aminet, `text/font/amknj16.lzh') All the documentation comes as Japanese text, so you need a JIS viewer to read the installation instructions. For your convenience, I have summarized the installation procedure below: 1. Place the `wlook/16' font in your `FONTS:' directory 2. Assign `JFONTS:' to where you unarchive the amknj16 fonts. This need not be the same as your `FONTS:' directory 3. Place the file `jFont-startup' in the `S:' directory 4. Insert the following line into your `startup-sequence': run >nil: jFontSys 5. To use execute the following command jmore <japanese.txt> JISconvert by Dwight Hubbard is a japanese text conversion utility for Amiga computers. It supports conversion between EUC, New JIS, Old JIS, NEC JIS and Shift JIS. It also has options to convert half-size katakana to full size and repair files with ESC characters stripped. No installation required. Requires AmigaDOS 2.04 or newer. 5.6.2 Chinese text viewers -------------------------- HZview (by Ji Ma) shows 8-bit Guo Biao encoded chinese text documents. Requires AmigaDOS v2.1 and above, and cclib.16 bitmap library (included). *NOTE*: This is a pre-release version. What the doc file does not tell you is that you need to do the following: 1. Open a default public hires interlaced 1 or 2-bit deep screen 2. The size of the file to be read is restricted to about 30K (on my machine, A1200, WB3.0) 3. An FPU is required if you want to scroll the text without crashing 4. The cclib.16 should be in the same directory as the file to be read Other small bugs still exist which may crash the machine. 6 Connecting your Amiga to the world ************************************ 7 Emulators *********** What? The Amiga isn't good enough? You really want it to be another machine? Well, look here... 7.1 Can I run Unix on my Amiga? =============================== Actually there are three Unix versions on the Amiga. All of them need at least 68030 (see 68EC0xx), probably a 68040 in the near future and seem to have problems with many hard-drive-controllers. You should have a good look into the documentation before installing it. Unix needs much resources, say at least 10Mb RAM and a 150Mb Unix-partition on the hard-drive. 1. Commodore offered a System V Unix in the past. It contained TCP/IP, X11 and other software and seemed to make a good job, but it was expensive and after all Commodore has dropped developing it. Commodore-Unix needs a streamer because it is distributed on tapes. 2. A Linux port is prepared. But actually there is not very much than the kernel. Specialists might like to use it, but it cannot be recommended for now. Linux is freely distributable. Sources: `ftp.tsx-11.mit.edu' or `ftp.uni-erlangen.de', both directory `/pub/Linux/MIRROR.tsx-11/680x0'. Or `ftp.leo.org', directory `/pub/comp/os/linux/680x0'. 3. NetBSD is freely distributable too. Like Linux it isn't ready for now, but it seems to make big steps. Most GNU software is said to run, especially emacs and gcc. I think it's worth to have a look on it. Sources: `ftp.uni-erlangen.de', Directory `/pub/amiga/unix/NetBSD-regensburg'. See Fish CD. 7.2 Is it possible to use the Amiga as X11 terminal? ==================================================== Yes, it is. There are three different packages available: GfxBase offers a commercial version which is said to be excellent, but expensive. The distribution includes different window managers and clients. A demo version is on Aminet. (`gfx/x11/GfxBase-X11-Demo.lha') AmiWin is a Shareware X11R6 product supporting AmiTCP, AS225 and different graphic cards. A demo version is available on Aminet, `gfx/x11/AmiWin*.lha'. DaggeX is freely distributable and probably not finished yet. (It calls itself version 0.91.) Source: Aminet, `gfx/x11/DaggeX-0.91.lha' and `gfx/x11/twm_930531.lha'. 7.3 Is there a way to start MS-Dos programs? ============================================ PC-Task is a software only IBM-PC emulator for all Amiga computers allowing use of MSDOS and MS Windows 3.1 software (provided RAM/HD space is sufficient). The current release is 3.1 which includes emulation of 80286 with MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA/SVGA, serial and parallel ports, mouse, two harddrives, two floppies and CDROM support. A demonstration version can be obtained from aminet sites: `/pub/aminet/misc/emu/PCTaskDemo31.lzh'. Author Chris Hames (bytey@werple.mira.net.au) Publisher (pctask@quasar.dialix.oz.au) 7.4 How to mount MsDos-formatted Syquests on Amiga ================================================== To mount a MSDos-formatted Syquest on Amiga, you need with an (DOSen) Adaptec-Controller the following Mount-entry in `DEVS:Mountlist': If your medium does have more than one partition, you need to copy the following Mount-Entry for every partition and give each partition another name (eg. SyC:, SyD:, SyE:, etc.) You don't need to change LowCyl and HighCyl for each partition; CrossDOSFileSystem does that automatically. SyC: /* SyD:, SyE:, etc. */ Filesystem = L:CrossDOSFileSystem Device = scsi.device Unit = 2 Flags = 1 Surfaces = 1 BlocksPerTrack = 1 BlockSize = 512 Reserved = 1 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 0 HighCyl = 524287 Buffers = 128 BufMemType = 0 Stacksize = 4000 Priority = 5 GlobVec = -1 DosType = 0x4D534800 Activate = 1 # For different (DOSen) controllers this entry should work, too, but maybe you have to adjust it. When inserted, the Syquest-270MB medium is (in this case) automatically mounted (as drive SyC:) and can be used with help of the CrossDOS-Filesystem as usual. Gerhard Schneider (fido@incubus.sub.org) Andre Keller (keller@rs11.hrz.th-darmstadt.de)