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- ID:WS Writing Directly to the Screen
-
- How can I tell if my program writes directly to the screen?
- Or how much memory it needs?
- -----------------------------------------------------------
-
- To tell if an application is writing directly to the video
- hardware inside DESQview, make the following changes in the
- application's Change a Program menu:
-
- 1) Set "Writes Text Directly to Screen" to N;
-
- 2) Set "Virtualize Text/Graphics" to N;
-
- 3) On the Advanced Options screen, blank out the following four
- fields in the "Window Position" section: Starting Height,
- Starting Width, Starting Row, and Starting Column. Put blanks in
- these fields, not zeros.
-
- When these changes have been made, open the program. DESQview
- will place a small window border on the screen; if the program
- comes up and stays within the small window border, it does not
- write directly to the screen. If it blows away the window border
- and takes the full screen, it writes directly to the hardware.
-
- There is no foolproof way to determine how much memory an
- application needs to run other than trial and error. You can
- make a reasonable guess by adding together the size of the .COM
- or .EXE file that starts the program and the size of its biggest
- overlay, but the program's data storage needs are difficult to
- predict. The time-honored method for determining the correct
- memory size for a window is to start by giving the window
- an excessive amount of memory, then reducing that figure a bit at
- a time until the program starts malfunctioning.
-