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Belgian Amiga Club - ADF Collection
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BS1 part 05.zip
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GOD14-(412)695-3647.adf
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LacePointerV1.0.Doc.pp
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LacePointerV1.0.Doc
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1992-08-04
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6KB
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129 lines
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LACEPOINTER
© by Nico François
Corbielaan 13
B-3060 Bertem, BELGIUM
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When you first show the Amiga to someone, have you ever heard this
remark: "Gee, what a fantastic machine, but what's this enormous mouse
pointer?" ? Then you can start explaining the mouse pointer is a hardware
sprite and these are always displayed in a Lores resolution.
LacePointer is a program that will change all that. Running LacePointer
will double the resolution of your mouse pointer. So your pointer will be
displayed in Lores-Interlace!
LacePointer is based on a simple but brilliant idea: If the Amiga
interlaces bitplanes, why not interlace the mouse pointer as well?
LacePointer will display a different mouse pointer each frame. Together these
two pointers form a complete interlaced pointer. The idea is not mine and all
credit for it must go to Geert Uytterhoeven.
One caveat becomes apparent: Your screen must be interlaced. So if you
run LacePointer it will force interlace on all screens, or it will only take
effect on interlaced screens. Behavior can be set using options. Owners of an
Amiga with some kind of flicker fixer, like an A3000 or an A2000 with A2320,
naturally won't notice anything.
Further, LacePointer will recognize the standard Workbench mouse pointer
(1.3 and 2.0) and the standard 2.0 wait pointer. It will replace these
pointers with its own pointers which have been redesigned for Lores-
Interlace. The standard 2.0 wait pointer will be replaced with an animated
pointer, a clock with turning hand. All this can be turned off if you don't
like it, but who wouldn't?
Install LacePointer by putting it in your user-startup on 2.0 or your
startup-sequence on 1.3, or by dragging it to your WbStartup drawer. There is
no need to "run" LacePointer. It will install itself and exit immediately.
LacePointer is provided in two versions: one for Workbench 2.0 or higher
(LacePointer) and one for Workbench 1.2/1.3 (LacePointer13). LacePointer for
Workbench 2.0 is shorter and more efficient than LacePointer13. Apart from
this, the only difference between two is that LacePointer13 also recognizes
and replaces the Workbench 1.3 Zzz cloud.
LacePointer will take only 3K of memory once installed. Overhead is
reduced to a minimum thanks to an interrupt handler written entirely in high-
speed optimized 68000 assembly.
LacePointer is compatible with and supports Kickstart and Workbench 2.0.
SHELL USAGE
Enter "LacePointer ?" for a usage template:
LacePointer [NODEFPOINTER] [NOWAITPOINTER] [NOFORCELACE]
[NOCLOCKTICK] [TICKSPEED n]
Explanation of the options:
NODEFPOINTER : Do not replace the standard 1.3 or 2.0 mouse pointer
with built-in Lores-Interlace replacement.
NOWAITPOINTER : Do not replace the standard 2.0 wait pointer with
built-in (animated) replacement.
NOFORCELACE : Do not force interlace on non-interlaced screens, but
instead display the normal mouse pointer.
NOCLOCKTICK : Do not animate the Lores-Interlace wait pointer.
TICKSPEED n : Set the speed (in vertical blanks) with which the hand
of the animated clock will turn. Default 7, higher is
slower.
Running LacePointer again will remove it from memory.
WORKBENCH USAGE
Double-click LacePointer to install it. Double-click again to remove it
from memory. Options can be set in the icon's tooltypes.
Select LacePointer's icon and choose Information from the Icons menu of
Workbench 2.0 or Info from the Workbench menu of Workbench 1.3. You can now
edit LacePointer's tooltypes. Check your manual for more information.
Recognized tooltypes:
NODEFPOINTER : See Shell option.
NOWAITPOINTER : " " "
NOFORCELACE : " " "
NOCLOCKTICK : " " "
TICKSPEED=n : " " "
QUIET : Quiet startup. Do not open a small window instructing
LacePointer has been installed.
Set the QUIET tooltype if you drag LacePointer to your WbStartup drawer.
Otherwise, you will be bothered with a window popping up every time you boot.
It is also best to enter STARTPRI=127 in the tooltypes so LacePointer will be
executed before other programs in your WbStartup drawer.
COMPATIBILITY
Quite a bit of work has gone into making LacePointer as compatible as
possible with Intuition. Present compatibility seems to be 100 percent.
LacePointer is not a completely legal program, simply because it can't
be. As far as I know, there is no legal way to replace the mouse pointer.
Everything that could be done in a legal, future-compatible way has been done
so. LacePointer should be as compatible with future versions of the Amiga
operating system as it can be.
LacePointer relies on the fact that Intuition uses the hardware sprite 0
for its mouse pointer. It gets this sprite from GfxBase->SimpleSprites[0].
If either of these two facts change, LacePointer will no longer function. On
the other hand, if these facts do change it will probably be because
Intuition uses an improved mouse pointer, so there will be no more use for
LacePointer.
LacePointer will almost certainly NOT work with the A2024 hires monitor.
When running Kickstart 2.0, LacePointer will recognize Productivity mode
screens. It will not force interlace and lace the mouse pointer in this case.
LacePointer is also compatible with SuperHires.
I have been running beta versions of this program for a few weeks now
and I have encountered no problems. If you have compatibility problems with
LacePointer, let me know and I'll try to fix what I can fix for the next
version.
As always, I hope you find this program useful!
Special thanks to Jorrit Tyberghein and Geert Uytterhoeven
"And when the planet hit the sun
I saw the face of Allison" - Pixies
Thanks to \X/ Amiga for being the best computer ever.
If you have suggestions or remarks about this program, or if you find
any bugs, please let me know. Write to the address given at the start of this
article.
END OF TEXT