The Atari Compendium/The Atari Compendium (Toad Computers) (1994).iso/files/umich/utils/slkmse31.zoo/silkmous.doc

Text File | 1993-03-16 | 12KB | 235 lines

    Doc file for SilkMouse 3.1
    Copyright (c) 1993 Mark Slagell
    609 Church Street, St. Johns, MI  48879


    SILKMOUSE 3.1 at a glance:
    ==========================

  ... has a uniquely smooth, fast, well-behaved mouse accelerator
  ... has a screen saver that won't intrude on your work
  ... compensates for a hardware bug in Atari keyboards
  ... allows you to freeze the screen after applications when needed
  ... installs from a small program in the AUTO folder
  ... can be customized from the desktop or the accessory menu
  ... runs on any Atari ST, STe, or TT computer.


    How to install SilkMouse
    ========================

 If you are currently using a mouse accelerator or screen saver, remove or
 disable it.  Copy SILKMOUS.PRG to your AUTO folder.

 Optionally, you can also install the SMC utility.  It is supplied here in
 two forms, accessory and CPX module.  The accessory can be renamed with a
 .PRG extender and run from the desktop if desired.  SMC allows you to
 enable or disable each feature of SilkMouse, and to generally tweak the
 whole thing to your taste.  But its use is not essential.

 Reboot, and SilkMouse will install.


    Mouse accelerator feature
    =========================

 SilkMouse "accelerates" the mouse in a radically different fashion from
 its competitors.  The design objective was never acceleration as such, but
 resolution-independence, i.e., uniformity of response in all resolutions.
 To achieve this, SilkMouse establishes a distance-to-distance relationship
 between mouse movement and pointer movement, whereas you are used to (and,
 I assure you, subliminally frustrated by) a distance-to-pixels
 relationship.  Acceleration is a natural by-product.

 Also, the Alt-arrow keys get along better with SilkMouse than with other
 accelerators.

 It's important to take some time to get used to the feel of SilkMouse.  At
 first it may seem too fast, even if you are used to another accelerator;
 this only means you are working too hard.  Because SilkMouse is not
 inherently jerky, and because it does not distort the mouse pointer's
 angle of motion as other accelerators do, you will quickly learn the
 correct gentle motions to reliably get the pointer where you want it
 without backtracking.

 What, you never noticed your old mouse accelerator distorting the angle of
 mouse motion?  Using almost any other accelerator, try moving the mouse
 diagonally at a moderate speed, or in rapid circles; you'll see.  The
 traditional acceleration method discourages diagonal motion by sharply
 bending the pointer trajectory parallel to one axis or the other.  Among
 true mouse accelerators (as opposed to doublers), only SilkMouse is
 entirely free from that effect.


    Screen saver feature
    ====================

 SilkMouse's screen saver is not meant to entertain you, or to frustrate
 you, but to extend the useful life of your monitor without unexpectedly
 blanking the display while you're looking at it.

 When a predefined time has elapsed with no input from mouse or keyboard
 (or, optionally, modem), the display inverts and goes to half intensity.
 For example, black text on a white background becomes gray text on a black
 background.  The screen remains in this state for an interval that is some
 multiple of the original delay, then goes black.  At any time, bumping the
 mouse or pressing any key restores the original display.

 The invert/dim algorithm is really the best for your monitor, as it
 assures even use of all areas of the screen and prevents burn-in.  It's
 best for your convenience too; even after protection begins, information
 on the screen remains visible for some time.

 When a monochrome monitor is attached, a screenful of memory is reserved
 during bootup.  This allows the screen saver to mimic its color behavior
 even though the hardware does not support much palette manipulation.  When
 changing states from normal to dimmed, the screen is either simply
 inverted (if the background was white), or dimmed by masking every other
 pixel (if the background was black).  In the former case, all screen
 activity remains continuously viewable.  In the latter, the display is
 updated every five seconds.  In both cases the display blanks completely
 after a while.  You may disable this feature when you save defaults; this
 saves some memory, but makes the saver unable to blank or dim the mono
 screen.  In that case it simply inverts periodically, as it did in earlier
 versions.

 Note: On a TT, "ST high" resolution is a color mode, not mono.


    Function key guard feature
    ==========================

 All Atari computers manufactured to date (at least, the ones I've used)
 have a problem in the keyboard.  It happens when a shift key is held down
 and two other adjacent keys are pressed at about the same time.  The
 keyboard will in that case sometimes erroneously report a shift-F1 or
 shift-F3, in addition to one or both of the keys actually pressed.  If
 you've never noticed, it's because you are an exceptionally careful
 typist, or because none of your programs does anything interesting when
 you press shift-F1 or shift-F3 anyway.  But it is a problem for a number
 of people.  The keyguard feature effectively cures the glitch.

 This feature must be turned on with the SMC utility in order to work; it
 is off by default because of possible conflicts with key-macro utilities.
 Such conflicts can also often be resolved by changing the order in which
 your AUTO programs run.


    Hold-screen option
    ==================

 The main use of this feature is for reading the screen output of a program
 run from the desktop, when that program was designed to run from a command
 line shell.

 You know the feeling.  You run an unfamiliar program, it prints a screen
 full of something which immediately disappears, and you're back at the
 desktop.  You wonder if there's a command line option you can send to make
 the program wait for a keypress before exiting, but of course that's part
 of the information you're not fast enough to read!  So you run it over and
 over, vainly trying to freeze the screen by hitting control-S or alt-Help
 at just the right millisecond.  (Am I the only one who's done this dance?)

 If the hold-screen option of SilkMouse is enabled, each application checks
 the status of the right mouse button when terminating.  If it is not being
 pressed, the application exits normally; otherwise the screen remains
 visible in whatever state the application left it, until you release the
 button.  You can also lock the screen and free your hands to take notes or
 whatever, by clicking the left button while holding the right one down.
 Then you can release both buttons, and the system will remain frozen until
 you click again with the right button.

 Like the function key guard, this feature must be turned on with the SMC
 utility to work.  Also, it is effective only after all AUTO programs have
 run and all accessories have loaded.


    More about the SMC utility
    ==========================

 You may customize and control SilkMouse in any of the following three
 ways, depending on your needs:

 1: Use SMC.CPX with Atari's extended control panel, or
 2: Install SMC.ACC as an accessory, or
 3: Rename SMC.ACC to SMC.PRG and run it from the desktop.

 Since the acceleration method used by SilkMouse is fairly non-intuitive,
 its configuration options need some explaining.  There is no table of
 distances to fill in, and no simple slow/fast adjustment.  It may help
 your understanding somewhat to think of a three-speed transmission
 designed to run in the middle gear most of the time.  SilkMouse can
 differentiate between much lower physical mouse speeds than any other
 accelerator; that capability makes for almost imperceptibly smooth shifts,
 higher overall acceleration, and better control.  What can be adjusted
 under this scheme are the physical mouse speeds assigned to the shift
 points, and to some extent, the gear ratio