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- SciTech Software
- Software Products and Ordering Information
-
- March 10, 1994
-
- Copyright (C) 1993 SciTech Software.
- All Rights Reserved.
-
- This file contains important information you will need to know
- before ordering any products from SciTech Software, and information
- about the Software Products that SciTech Software offers. In order
- to save time and resources, the actual product order form is
- included separately in the file ORDER.DOC. You should print the
- order form and fill in the required information AFTER you have
- fully read the information contained in this document.
-
- Please ensure that you read and understand the license agreement
- governing the use of this software in the file LICENSE.DOC or
- MGLLEGAL.DOC before ordering any products from SciTech Software.
-
- This file is formatted to allow you to read the document online
- using a text editor such as the MSDOS EDIT program, or can be
- printed on your printer using the following command:
-
- copy products.doc prn
-
- or by using the MSDOS print command. Don't try and print the file
- using a word processor such as Word For Windows as the formatting
- information will be lost.
-
- SciTech Software products also usually come with an online version
- of the documentation in text format. This online documentation can
- also be printed on your printer in the same manner as mentioned
- above.
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- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 1
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- Ordering Information
- --------------------
-
- How to order products
-
- You can order SciTech Software products by postal mail, fax or
- electronic mail. Fax and electronic mail orders must be paid
- for by credit card (see below). Electronic mail orders can be
- ordered with the following email addresses:
-
- Internet: 100237.2213@compuserve.com
- CompuServe: 100237,2213
-
- Fax orders can be faxed to the following number:
-
- +61 3 690 2137
-
- You will need to insert the appropriate international dialing
- prefix to dial from outside of Australia (ie: 011 in the USA
- and Canada).
-
- Shipping Charges
-
- There is no additional charge for standard shipping via
- Economy Airmail within Australia for most goods. However for
- heavier items (see shipping codes in following table)
- additional shipping charges will be added. There is an
- additional shipping charge for shipping items outside of
- Australia. Please consult the following table to find the
- correct shipping charges for the product you are ordering
- (incorrect orders will unfortunately have to be returned):
-
- Within Autralia
-
- Shipping Code: | A B C D E
- ----------------+----------------------------
- Economy Air: | N/A N/A $3 $7 $10
- Normal Air: | N/A N/A $8 $20 $25
- ---------------------------------------------
-
- U.S.A and Europe
-
- Shipping Code: | A B C D E
- ----------------+----------------------------
- Economy Air: | $2 $5 $10 $20 $25
- Normal Air: | $2 $5 $12 $30 $40
- ---------------------------------------------
-
- The shipping code for each product is listed in the first
- column next to the name of the product as a single uppercase
- letter. Please contact SciTech software for discount shipping
- charges on 3 or more items.
-
- For other shipping charges please contact SciTech Software for
- pricing (such as shipping via Federal Express or UPS).
-
- Payment Terms
-
- All credit card charges will be authorised. Your card will
-
- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 2
-
- generally be charged the day the order is shipped or possibly
- the day before. Personal checks may be subject to a bank
- clearance delay before shipment of your order (personal
- cheques cannot be accepted from international customers -
- please see the International Orders section below). All
- payments must be made payable in Australian dollars (A$) drawn
- on an Australian bank. Credit card orders will be charged in
- Australian Dollars, and this will then be converted to the
- appropriate currency by your bank.
-
- SciTech Software can accept orders for Bankcard, Mastercard
- and VISA. American Express is not accepted at this time.
-
- International Orders
-
- SciTech Software is happy to accept orders from customers not
- resident in Australia. You will need to make the payment
- payable in Australian Dollars (A$) as either an international
- money order or credit card order. Personal cheques cannot be
- accepted from international customers, and will be returned
- the to the customer at their expense.
-
- International orders will also be subject to higher shipping
- fees. Please see the section above to determine the shipping
- fees required for your order.
-
- Upgrade Policy
-
- When you purchase a single copy of any of the products sold by
- SciTech Software, you can obtain maintenance releases of the
- product on disk at nominal charge from SciTech Software. Major
- upgrades of the product will also be available from SciTech
- software on disk for a reasonable cost.
-
- When you purchase a maintenance release of a product from
- SciTech software on disk, it always comes with electronic
- copies of the manuals on disk. New printed manuals are
- available for extra charge if required. New printed manuals
- will always be supplied for major upgrades.
-
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- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 3
-
- Product Information
- -------------------
-
- MegaToolbox (MTL)
-
- The MegaToolbox is a set of four separate function libraries
- for C and C++ programming environments under the MS-DOS
- operating system. The separate libraries that make up the
- MegaToolbox are:
-
- Console library. This provides a number of routines for
- interfacing to the video display in standard text mode. It
- provides the functionality of the standard C output
- routines, but can be configured to send the output to the
- display in any of the available colors, and the output can
- be mapped and clipped to any rectangular window on the
- screen. The routines are similar in operation to the set of
- console output routines provided with the Borland C++ and
- Turbo C++ range of compilers, but they are faster and more
- configurable.
-
- Event handling library. This library provides a set of low
- level routines to maintain a queue of keyboard and mouse
- events. Naturally the events are not restricted to just
- keyboard and mouse events, but can be any type of user
- defined event. This allows the program to easily combine
- the keyboard and mouse into a single system for interacting
- with the user.
-
- Mouse library. This library provides a high level language
- interface to the mouse driver, allowing the user program to
- fully control the mouse and to install a custom mouse event
- handler. Full control of the mouse in both text and
- graphics modes is provided.
-
- Sysinfo library. This library provides a set of diagnostic
- routines that can be called upon to identify the type of
- computer system that a program is running on. It can
- automatically determine things such as the processor type
- (8086 - 80486), BIOS class, extended keyboard support,
- video display subsystem type and so on.
-
- The MegaToolbox supports the Borland C++, Microsoft C and
- Symantec C++ range of compilers in 16 bit real mode (32 bit
- protected mode support for Symantec C++ and Watcom C/C++ will
- be available soon, and may well be available by the time you
- read this).
-
- MegaGraph Graphics Library (MGL)
-
- The MegaGraph Graphics Library (MGL) is a full featured
- graphics library for displaying high performance graphics on
- personal computers. It provides fast, low level 2D drawing
- primitives that can be used to implement video games, user
- interface software and even real-time 3D animation. It will
- work in any video mode that has 16 or more colors, including
- the new HiColor and TrueColor modes available on PC's.
-
- The MGL will also take advantage of certain PC based Windows
-
- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 4
-
- Accelerators for better performance in certain areas.
-
- Currently the MGL only works in 16 bit real mode with either
- Borland C++, Microsoft C and Symantec C++ however work is
- progressing on the 32 bit protected mode versions of the
- library.
-
- MGL 2D Extensions (MGL2D)
-
- The MGL 2D extensions library provides a fast floating
- point/fixed point two dimensional world coordinate system on
- top of the MGL. It provides full support for arbitrary 2D
- transformations such as translates, rotates, scales and
- shears. It provides 2D versions the MGL primitives such as
- pixels, lines, ellipses, polygons and even vector font text
- output (fully tranformed).
-
- It relies upon the Techniques Class Library to provide the
- transformation routines required to operate correctly, and is
- written in C++.
-
- Currently this product is only in the alpha testing stages and
- is not directly supported. You can obtain pre-release copies
- of the software with not documentation, and the MGL2D will
- eventually become a fully supported product.
-
- MGL 3D Extensions (MGL3D)
-
- The MGL 3D extensions library provides a fast floating
- point/fixed point three dimensional world coordinate system on
- top of the MGL. The MGL3D library is fast enough for doing
- real-time 3D polygonal animation, and the interface to the
- library is similar to that provided by the Silicon Graphics
- Iris GL library. It provides support for arbitrary 3D
- transformations such as translates, rotates, scales and
- shears. It provides 3D primitives such as pixels, lines,
- ellipses, polygons and even vector font text output (fully
- transformed).
-
- Currently the MGL3D does not provide direct support for hidden
- surface removal but support for software Z-buffering is being
- added to the low level MGL library to support this in the
- future. Presently a C++ BSP tree class is provided as an
- interim solution.
-
- It relies upon the Techniques Class Library to provide the
- tranformation routines required to operate correctly and is
- written in C++.
-
- Currently this product is only in the alpha testing stages and
- is not directly supported. You can obtain pre-release copies
- of the software with not documentation, and the MGL2D will
- eventually become a fully supported product.
-
- Techniques Class Library (TECH)
-
- The Techniques Class Library is high performance C++ class
- library for neatly implementing various data structures in
- C++. It uses the C++ template facility to provide type-safe
-
- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 5
-
- generic data structures. This library is used by all SciTech
- Software's C++ products.
-
- Currently this library is still under development and is
- distributed as copyrighted freeware with full source code and
- no documentation, and is not directly supported by SciTech
- Software. In the future this class library will become a
- supported SciTech Software product.
-
- MegaVision Application Frameworks (MVIS)
-
- The MegaVision Application Frameworks is a C++ based GUI
- toolkit for for the MegaGraph Graphics Library. It is similar
- in concept to Borland's Turbo Vision for DOS, but is still
- only partially developed. This library was used to build the
- MGL demo programs.
-
- Currently this library is still under development and is
- distributed as copyrighted freeware with full source code and
- no documentation, and is not directly supported by SciTech
- Software. There are no plans at this stage to make this a
- fully supported SciTech Software product.
-
- Universal VESA VBE
-
- The Universal VESA VBE is a small Terminate and Stay Resident
- program (TSR) for MSDOS that provides the VESA Video BIOS
- Extensions (VBE) for most SuperVGA cards on the market. It
- provides the latest VESA VBE standard so you can be sure your
- favorite programs will work correctly. Programs like Microsoft
- Flight Simulator 5 require that something like this be
- installed to obtain the highest performance possible.
-
- It also comes with a special 'paranoid' test program, for
- fully stress testing all VESA VBE interface implementations to
- ensure that they fully conform to the latest standards.
-
- The MGL works best with the UniVBE installed as it can take
- full advantage of the features on most SuperVGA video cards.
-
- Universal VESA VBE Source Code
-
- Full source code for the above program. In order to be able to
- compile this you will need to have the Borland C++ 3.1
- compiler for MSDOS (Borland C++ 4.0 does not work due to
- linker problems). When you order this you will also recieve
- the source for the SuperVGA test kit library.
-
- Miscellaneous freeware
-
- The miscellaneous freeware disk contains a number of freely
- available tools developed by the people at SciTech Software
- over the years. They are supplied as is, without any warranty
- and are not supported, but come supplied with full source
- code. The tools included on the disk are:
-
-
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-
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- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 6
-
- SuperVGA Kit
- ------------
-
- A small set of test programs and libraries for programming
- SuperVGA cards in 16,256,32k,64k and 16 million color modes
- using the VESA VBE programming interface. Comes with a simple
- library showing how to interface with the VESA VBE from C and
- C++ programs. It also includes the full source code for the
- 'paranoid' VESA VBE stress test program.
-
- C Tools
- -------
-
- A set of tools for working with data structures and other
- things in ANSI C. This library was written a long time ago and
- has since been converted in the Techniques Class Library
- described above. Useful if you still write code in ANSI C.
-
- Trans
- -----
-
- A fast text file translation program for converting text files
- between DOS and Unix formats and expanding tabs to spaces.
- Comes with makefiles to for both DOS and Unix environments.
-
- Makefile Utilities
- ------------------
-
- A number of simple utility programs for simplifying the work
- required to use the make program to create libraries and
- integrate with RCS. Works with Borland C++ make.
-
- The Zen Timer Library
- ---------------------
-
- This is a 'C' callable library for timing code fragments with
- an accuracy of better than 10 microseconds under the MSDOS
- operating system. The code was originally written by Michael
- Abrash for his book "Zen of Assembly language - Volume I,
- Knowledge" and was made into a 'C' callable library with a set
- of C++ wrapper classes.
-
- The PMODE Library
- -----------------
-
- This library provides a small DOS extender independant API for
- protected mode programming and covers all of the issues that
- usually burden the programmer converting their code to work
- with various DOS extenders (such as issuing real mode
- interrupts, allocating real mode memory, accessing the low 1Mb
- of real mode memory directly and installing protected mode
- interrupt handlers). All SciTech Software products use the
- PMODE library for providing support for DOS extenders, and all
- that is required to support a new DOS extender is to add
- support for this DOS extender to the PMODE Library. It fully
- supports real mode, 16 bit protected mode and 32 bit protected
- mode programming.
-
-
-
- SciTech Software Product Information Page: 7