home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Collection of Tools & Utilities
/
Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso
/
ansi
/
vmoire18.zip
/
VGAMOIRE.DOC
< prev
Wrap
Text File
|
1992-03-30
|
50KB
|
1,060 lines
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
VGAMOIRE v1.8
by Christopher Antos
Copyright (C) 1990,1991 by Christopher Antos
March 1992
moi│re (mwär, môr) n. [Fr, watered silk < MOHAIR] a
fabric, esp. silk, rayon, or acetate, having a
watered, or wavy, pattern.
_ _
moi│ré (mwär ra', mô-; môr'a) adj. [Fr, pp. of /moirer/,
to water < /moire/: see prec.] having a watered, or
wavy, pattern, as certain fabrics, stamps, or metal
surfaces --n. 1 a watered pattern pressed into
cloth, etc. with engraved rollers 2 MOIRE
─── From Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College
Edition, Copyright (C) 1988 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Questions or Comments?
Please write to: Christopher Antos
2115 Windsor Drive
Ann Arbor, Michigan
48103-5652
Or send EMail to "Christopher_Antos@um.cc.umich.edu"
or "antos@engin.umich.edu"
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Please write and make suggestions, complaints, compliments, or
even ask questions. Thank you!
─────── CONTENTS ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Registering VGAMoire
Release Notes
Introduction
Installing VGAMoire
Using VGAMoire's Features
Uninstalling VGAMoire
Examples
Known Conflicts
Version History Summary
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
═══════ REGISTERING VGAMOIRE ═══════════════════════════════════
This program is not free, nor is it in the Public Domain. It is
a ShareWare program. This means that you can try it out for a
reasonable length of time. If it useful to you, or you like it,
you must register it. To do this, print out the file
REGISTER.TXT and follow the instructions within it.
VGAMoire is a very high quality screen saver. If you can find a
better one for a lower price, I'd like to know (seriously!). It
has features the commercial competition can't even claim to
match. I put a lot of time and energy into this product, and I
believe anyone with a VGA graphics adapter cannot help but
benefit from using VGAMoire.
So, please fill out the registration form (in REGISTER.TXT) and
register today! You will be notified of any future releases
when they are made available.
═══════ RELEASE NOTES ══════════════════════════════════════════
I am preparing to release a new, vastly improved version (and
rewritten nearly from scratch) of this screen saver. The new
product is called Morning Star and uses "saver modules". A
saver module is a small program which draws a particular design.
Morning Star lets you choose which saver module to use. It can
even switch randomly between different saver modules, adding
some sparkle to the screen. Because Morning Star uses a very
large amount of memory, it unfortunately requires EMS memory.
This allows it to keep all of its data in EMS memory and only
use less than 8k of conventional memory, to avoid interfering
with other applications. Morning Star will also support
multiple video cards. However, the first release will probably
only include a VGA video driver. Later updates will provide
support for other video cards.
If you have a third-party (non-IBM) SuperVGA adapter, please see
the "Known Conflicts" section for information on a possible
problem between VGAMoire and your video adapter card. This
release, VGAMoire v1.8, provides solutions to many of the
problems caused by bugs in the Tseng Labs VGA chip. The fixes
will allow VGAMoire to work much better on almost all VGA
displays, whether IBM, ATi, Tseng Labs, or another manufacturer.
═══════ INTRODUCTION ═══════════════════════════════════════════
You've probably seen a lot of other screen savers, and you're
probably not very impressed. Many are boring and just blank out
the screen--which can even be annoying, because sometimes it's
hard to tell if the machine or the monitor are even on! Other
screen savers may save the display in memory and draw a moving
design until a key is pressed. I have yet to see any other
screen saver that saves the FULL display configuration and
restores it. Other popular screen savers have a number of tiny
but very annoying flaws (eg, they might not save the cursor
shape, maybe they don't hide the mouse pointer or save the mouse
driver state, perhaps they can't use EMS, they may only save up
to four video pages, they probably can't restore the screen
properly unless it is in 25-line text mode, etc...)
I decided it was time to write a screen saver that restored the
screen COMPLETELY. Enter VGAMoire. The moire pattern design
was inspired by Magic! (for Microsoft Windows) and Moire (for
the Macintosh), two other well-known screen savers. VGAMoire
has enjoyed a large amount of success, but many users suggested
other designs and support for video cards besides VGA. During
the past year, I've been hard at work on Morning Star, a new,
much improved version of VGAMoire (I had to change the name
because Morning Star can do other designs besides the moire, and
because Morning Star works on video cards besides the VGA).
Morning Star is not yet ready to be released, but it's getting
close!
Summary of Features:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
o can use EMS memory, if any is available!
o allows options to be changed while it is resident!
o is Windows-aware!
o is mouse-aware!
o can wait up to 30 minutes, then activate!
o is telecommunications-aware!
o is disk-I/O-aware!
o can be turned on/off from the keyboard or batch
files!
o certain aspects of the moire design can be
configured by the user!
o will not interfere with DOS!
o is DESQview compatible!
═══════ INSTALLING VGAMOIRE ════════════════════════════════════
NOTE: If at any time you have trouble with VGAMoire,
first check in the "Known Conflicts" section to
see if your problem is described there!
You can install VGAMoire from the DOS prompt, or from your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Once VGAMoire is installed, you can pop up the screen saver
manually by pressing the hotkey (the default is Ctrl-Alt-Shift),
or you can let the machine idle for the specified amount of time
and let the screen saver automatically pop up. You can press
Ctrl-Alt-E to disable the screen saver (though you can still
manually pop it up). Pressing Ctrl-Alt-B will reenable the
screen saver.
NOTE: some SuperVGA cards have extended text modes (eg.
100, 1