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Atari Mega Archive 1
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Atari Mega Archive - Volume 1.iso
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telecomm
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storm100.lzh
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STORM.DOC
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1993-10-31
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Storm Main features:
GEM-based terminal in a window. Custom font and text routines for
high-speed operation.
Multiple editing windows and capture buffer window are resizable, and
moveable. Full word wrap is implemented. With MultiTOS, the number of
windows is limited only by available memory.
MultiTOS compatible. Uses memory sparingly and releases unused memory back
to the system.
Uses GEM clipboard for cutting and pasting text.
The script language is interpreted Basic, with powerful command extensions
for telecommunication. Basic runs in its own window.
Background dialing of multiple phone numbers.
No fixed limit on dial directory entries.
Background file transfer without requiring a reset-proof ramdisk.
File transfer modules are loadable and unloadable.
Terminal emulations are loadable and unloadable.
Windows-style menu dropdowns and hotkeys.
Support for extra serial ports on TT and MegaSTE as well as Falcon serial
port.
Capture buffer can be active at all times, not just when using terminal
screen. You can edit or scroll through the capture buffer while continuing
to capture text from the terminal or while uploading or downloading, or
dialing phone numbers, or running a Basic program.
Even without MultiTOS, this is a highly multitasking program.
Installation:
Create a folder and extract the contents of the LZH file into it.
STORM.PRG is the terminal program.
STORM.RSC is the resource file for the program.
Loadable file transfer modules
BPLUS.TRF: CompuServe BPlus file transfer.
XYMODEM.TRF: Xmodem and Ymodem.
ZMODEM.TRF: Zmodem.
Loadable terminal emulations
VIDTEX.EMU: CompuServe VIDTEX terminal emulation.
VT100.EMU: VT100 and VT52 terminal emulation.
HELP.INI is a help file for Storm Basic.
As you use the program, other files may be created. They are:
STORM.INI is the initialization file containing all the user defaults.
STORMKEY.INI contains the keyboard macro definitions.
DIALDIR.INI contains the dial directory entries.
Double-click on STORM.PRG to run the program. The menu bar and terminal
window will appear.
The terminal window always occupies a full 80 columns, which is full-width
on the normal ST monitors. The window is split into two pieces. The bottom
part is the typeahead window. The typeahead is five lines in ST Monochrome,
but only a single line in ST Medium resolution.
While you can't size the terminal window, you can move it around and
overlap it with other windows. You can even close it, and terminal
activity will continue on.
Using the mouse, you can select text from the terminal window. Just
position the mouse cursor where you want to start and press down the left
mouse button. Drag the mouse pointer to the ending location. When you
release the left mouse button, you will get a popup menu letting you choose
what to do with the selected text.
"Copy" copies it to the GEM clipboard. "Save" lets you save it as a text
file. "Xmit" sends it out the serial port. "Upload" copies it to the
GEM clipboard folder and then uploads it using the Ascii file transfer
protocol, and "Print" prints it to the parallel port.
To cancel out of the popup menu, press Escape or Undo, or click the left
mouse button outside the popup menu area.
====================================================
Using the Menu bar.
Try pressing Alt-F. The File menu dropdown should appear. Now you can use
the cursor keys to go up and down through the available menu items. Or,
use the left and right cursor keys to move to other menu dropdowns. (Note:
the Desk menu dropdown can only be accessed using the mouse, as it is
controlled exclusively by GEM).
Pressing the Return key selects the currently highlighted menu selection.
Escape or Undo exits.
Most menu items also have a keyboard shortcut key, which is underlined.
For example, press Alt-S (for the Settings menu) and then 'S' (or Alt-S)
for the Serial Port entry. You should see the serial settings dialog box
appear.
I think you will find this type of menu keyboard shortcut easier to
remember than assigning one unique key to every menu selection, because it
is easier to remember the first letters of words than dozens of wierd
control-shift-alt key combinations.
Dialog Boxes
If you looked at the serial port setup dialog, you will see that also has
keyboard shortcuts. Just press Alt-B for 'Baud' and the popup menu for
baud selection appears. Since there is no editable text in this dialog box,
you could have just pressed the letter 'B'. Or, click on the button beside
"Baud Rate".
You can scroll through the baud rate popup menu with the cursor keys, or
use the mouse. You have three ways to select an entry. Press return to
select an entry, or click on it with the mouse. Some baud rate entries have
underlined numbers. Press the appropriate number key to select those
entries.
To cancel, press Undo, or click the mouse outside the dropdown.
To exit the dialog press Return, or press Undo to cancel and exit.
Many popup menus have the current selection indicated with a checkmark.
The current selection is highlighted by default, unless the mouse is over
another entry.
=========================================
Capture buffer.
The capture buffer is available at any time by selecting it from the
Window menu, or by the keyboard shortcut ALT-2. (The terminal window
keyboard shortcut is ALT-1.) The capture window is a GEM-based editor in a
window. The window can be sized and moved anywhere on the screen. Cut and
paste uses the GEM clipboard.
You toggle capture on and off by selecting the first item in the Capture
menu. This item is either "Capture On" or "Capture Off", depending on
whether the capture is currently on or off. When capture is enabled, a
plus sign '+' appears beside the Capture menu heading. Note: Capture
strips out all control codes and escape sequences.
You don't have to have the terminal window on top, or even open, for
capture to operate. You don't even have to have the capture buffer window
open. This is particularly useful with high speed modems. You could turn
capture on, close the terminal window, switch to the capture buffer window,
and read messages at your own pace.
Editing text
In the capture buffer, or other editing windows, you can use the cursor
keys to move around. Up and down move up and down one line. Left and right
move up and down one line. Shift-left moves to the start of the line,
shift-right moves to the end. Shift-up moves up a screenful of text,
shift-down moves down a screenful of text.
Clr/Home moves to the start of text, Shift-Clr/Home moves to the end of
text in an editing window.
You can also position the cursor by using the mouse and clicking where you
want the cursor to appear.
'Delete' deletes the character under the cursor, backspace deletes to the
left of the cursor. Shift-delete deletes to the end of the line.
The number of lines and the current cursor location is displayed in an
information line at the top of the screen. This information line updates a
couple of times a second. (Continuous updating would have been too slow.)
Unlike the original Flash, this editor does full wordwrap, whether
inserting or deleting text. However, pressing the Return key forces a hard
end of line. Also, the editor will NOT slow down when editing large files,
and it allocates and releases memory dynamically.
When loading a file, an alert appears asking whether to wrap the text or
not. The program figures out what should be word wrapped by looking at the
ends of lines. A single space at the end of a line means a line gets
wrapped. By default, saving text will leave that space at the end of the
line whereas trailing spaces get removed from lines with hard returns. So
most files you save and load can still be wordwrapped.
Unfortunately some files may contain extra spaces at the ends of lines or
other formatting which should not be wrapped. You can choose not to word
wrap text files when loading them. In the Edit Window Settings d