Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Hi,
    
    IT IS VERY HARD TO AMAZE ME, BUT THIS PROGRAM BEATS MOREROWS TO
    A PULP.
    
    I LOVE it.  I can't believe how well this program works.  I am writing
    this note from our cluster using Meshugena and a new multiple session
    manager written by Jeff Lomicka (Author of Whack) and myself.  I
    don't have to have all of my sessions overlapping, and I can open
    the windows big enough to get a real 24 x 80 display.
    
    I wonder if I just breathed some cyanide gas and this is what heaven
    is like.
    
    	--MIke
    

(That's the Atari-ST "Whack" terminal emulator, not the Amiga debugger
"Whack", but I think most of you know that by now.)

    Yessss!  I can slide windows out of my way!  One of the things that
    the M*c did better than the Amiga was the fact that you can slide windows
    most of the way off of the screen.  (Now if C= will just "pretty"
    up Intuition and the Workbench a little, the M*c won't have
    anything on the Amiga.)
    
    I agree with Mike.  Morerows is toast.  Of course vScreen gobbles up
    so much CHIP RAM that it makes it even more urgent that I find more
    memory somehow.  (It begins to look like I'll have to upgrade to
    the A2000 after all.)
    
    Anyway, this tool is so good that I have the sincere hope that C=
    will incorporate it into a future release of Intuition.  It should
    be full supported.  

    Now we just have to convince Eric Lavitsky to change Dropcloth,
    to work with vScreen.  (It doesn't.  At least with a hires Workbench.)
    It would be nice to have better defined boundaries to the screen
    and Dropcloth with its patterned backdrop would do quite nicely.
    
    Gary

	This is rather nice.  I'm impressed.  One warning though - if you're
addicted to Uedit, this isn't for you.  Uedit really doesn't like this, and
will give you garbage until it decides to crash the system.  DME works fine
with this, as does Ed (the lackluster editor that comes with Workbench).  I
haven't tried any of the flavours of Emacs.  I also haven't tried WordPerfect.
Hmmmm, better go give that one a shot now... Oh well, I don't have enough
memory available at the moment.  I'll try later and post the results.

Mark

	WordPerfect works fine with it.

	Ed, does this work with 1.3, or am I going to have to give it up
soon?

Mark

Re: .6

	Thanks, that's nice to know.

	Also, I have found a problem with DME.  If the window it's run from
has been enlarged (bigger than would fit on a normal screen), there are some
problems.  First, the DME window won't resize, and second, it seems to crash
on exiting.

Mark

    This sounds fabulous !! Is there anyone who could volunteer to download
    it for me please ?? I will return disks/refund postage etc.
              ^^^^^^
    			Modemless,
    				Alan T.

    
    You can use NewZap to edit stupid programs that assume that the
    screen size is 640 x 200 or 640 x 400.  (This is bad Ami programming
    practice, right?  Shouldn't you check the screen size first?)
    
    Anyway, I read some notes on PLINK where people are searching for
    hex occurrances of 640 x *** and changing it to whatever size they
    want.

    Also, the Mac DOES allow you to move windows off screen, but to
    scroll the screen requires 'Stepping Out' or similar sliding screen
    hacks.  It sure doesn't scroll as fast as a an Amiga blit.
    
    Another tip; if your running low on CHIP ram (C'mon Fat Agnes),
    you might try cutting Workbench back to a single bitplane with WBDepth.
    I think it's still in my directory; if not, I'll re-upload it. 
    Icons look a litle bland in only two colors, but you will cut your
    CHIP ram usage in half.
    
      //
    \X/  Ed.
                                              
    

    I've re-loaded a couple of old tools that should go nicely with
    VWorkbench.
    
    WBDepth allows you to specify the number of bitplanes for the Workbench
    screen.  Usage is 'WBDepth n'.
    
    WBIconify will turn any Workbench window into an Icon, ala V*xStations.
    
    Enjoy.
    
      //
    \X/  Ed.

    Never used WBDepth.  Does it work with most software?  (Guess
    I'll just have to fool with it for awhile.)  WBIconify is slick
    but I think I'd rather use vScreen and slide windows out of the
    way.  Personal preference and all.
    
    Thanks for the ideas, Ed.
    
    Gary (Uh... how might one draw an ASCII "boing"? :-)

    Yowzuh!!!  I've been using WBDepth with vScreen for a few minutes
    now and I'm in love.  I can have an ugly 1 bit plane workbench that
    is 640x800 and still only take as much memory as the usual 640x400x2
    workbench!!  Thanks indeed, Ed.  
    
    For those of you who are rolling in FAST RAM so that you can spare
    the CHIP RAM, be careful with the 3 bit plane WB and vScreen.  It
    could be that I was just getting low on memory, but when I tried
    it, vScreen got a little flakey on me.  Didn't crash, but windows
    started wrapping around.  (I sized a window downward and suddenly
    I saw the top of the window, at the bottom of the screen.  Cute.)
    
    If you can stand the ugly look of the workbench, give them both
    a try.  
    
    Maybe we should all start using 1 bitplane, black and white
    workbenches.  Yeah, and then someone can write a little program
    to put a little black apple on the title bar.  Yeah!  That's the
    ticket....  :-)
    
    Gary

RE .*  

I agree!  vScreen is a MUST for the Amiga!  I put it in my startup-sequence
along with a couple NEWCLI and wSize,wMove and wMax commands to arrange my
workbench at boot time...

This is fantastic!  Thanks for uploading it Ed! Youv'e created a monster :-)

A couple notes:

	it would be nice if the wxxxx utilities allowed you to specify
	position and size as an absolute numbers (like offset from a corner
	(say, top left) of the workbench, and size IN pixels, not how much to
	grow/shrink). This �pixels from the current position is the pits!

	Luckily, each NEWCLI command puts it's window at the top of the
	window list (ala wList). Otherwise, each NEWCLI would be inaccessable
	from the wxxxx routines since the windows all have the title "New CLI".
        Once you do a NEWCLI, and wxxx it to place, the next NEWCLI command
	creates a new window, and all wxxxx routines go to that one - you
	cant get to the previous ones anymore! Whish Amiga had a way to
	change the window titles at creation time (does it already?)

	I noticed that the Workbench disk icons cannot be moved out of the
	original size of workbench (640x200 in top left of vScreen). Although
	I haven't yet tried to wSize the "Workbench" window to the new
	vScreen size... Maybe that's the way?

	Here is (basically whats in) my startup-sequence as far as vScreen
	goes:

		vScreen 840 300		; make wbench bigger

		newcli                  ; Create a CLI and make it smaller
		wSize -120 40 "New CLI"
		wMax 520 140 "New CLI"	; Otherwise F2/Conman will fill WB!
		wMove  50 50 "New CLI"
		

		newcli			; another
		wSize -120 +40 "New CLI"
		wMax 520 140 "New CLI"
		wMove 50 150 "New CLI"
	

I'm sure this won't be my final setup (in fact I'm, not even sure those were
the last numbers I tried last night).  
 


Are the vScreen sources available?


John

    
    I discovered that when using WBIconify and VWorkbench, you cannot
    move iconified windows off of the original 640 x 400 screen area.
    
    Anyway, this is all great stuff, but we're gonna get in trouble
    someday... probably with 1.4, where all the graphics libraries will be
    rewritten and optimized.  All this stuff does illegal and devious
    things to Intuition.  If CBM would sexify Workbench with drop down
    options for screen size, number of planes, and built-in iconification,
    we'd have true workstation-like functionality. 
                          
      //
    \X/  Ed.

    
>    I discovered that when using WBIconify and VWorkbench, you cannot
>    move iconified windows off of the original 640 x 400 screen area.


Yup. This is true of ALL workbench icons (like the disk icons!)

Workbench creates a screen (named "Workbench Screen") and aslo a backdrop
window (names "Workbench") into which it writes it's icons. Since the workbench
*window* is a backdrop, the icons in it are always behind every other window
on the workbench screen.  I wonder if doing a:

	vScreen newx newy "Workbench Screen"	; name not required here"
	wSize newx newy "Workbench"		; fix workbench backdrop window

would fix this? I'll try tonight...

John

    do you loadwb after vscreen.
    

>    do you loadwb after vscreen.


I tried that (by mistake at first). all it did was a nasty guru.

But come to think of it, That was probably because before LoadWB, only
the "Workbench Screen" exists (which will make vScreen happy). I was
then doing a wSize, which probably caused it to croak..    

John

Re: .0

>    Here's an interesting Workbench mod... you can create virtual screens
>    of any size up to 1024 x 1024 (currently the Amiga limit).

I recommend that you not create a screen with any dimension greater than
1008.  Some of the graphics routines assume that certain operations can be
performed by the blitter in one pass.  The blitter hardware has a 1008
pixel limit.

The new Hedley monitor that Commodore has been taking to trade shows only
shows 1008 pixels across in order to be compatible with the blitter limits.

Looks like doing vScreen before loadWB works.

John