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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.
SciTech Software Product Information Page: 1
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: rcskb@minyos.xx.rmit.edu.au
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.
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:
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