From: pmiller@csugrad.cs.vt.edu (Paul Miller)
Subject: Playing with the A4000...
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 20:50:08 GMT

Dan Barrett writes:

>         The first thing I did was go into the Prefs drawer and try things
> out.  There are 2 new Preferences tools:  Locale (for setting language and
> country-specific parameters) and Sound (for beeps and sampled sound
> playback).  I noticed that several of the Preferences programs changed their
> look for (as far as I could tell) no real reason:  Time, Font, and
> IControl.  Gadgets were rearranged when (I thought) they looked fine in

These features are part of the WorkBench 2.1 relase as well.

>         A few of the Prefs programs had a scrolling list setup that looks a
> bit like the ASL file requester.  Does GadTools now have a generic scrolling
> list gadget?  (Or has it always had one?  I don't know.)  If so, then great!

Yes - GadTools has always had LISTVIEW gadgets.

>         The Palette Prefs have changed considerably -- you now use
> a circle (color wheel?) to choose colors.  It was very intuititive.
> You can also choose the 8 colors that have special meanings:  text
> color, background color, outline color, menu color, menu text color,
> etc.  Some of these colors were forced by the program to be identical.
> Why is this?

Some of those currently share the same pens. There is discussion of adding more
pens to add more specifity.

>         I found some unidentifiable files in the devs:DataTypes drawer.
> They had names like ILBM, 8SVX, and AmigaGuide, and their default Workbench
> tool is c:AddDataTypes.  Is this some new way to recognize certain types of
> files?  Any more details on it?

These are the new DataTypes, what I believe to be the best part of 3.0.
They will let ANY program which uses the datatypes libraries incorporate
ANY subclass of a datatype. For example, a program supporting the PICTURE
datatype would automatically be able to load, remap, and display any
picture with a supported subclass, including ILBM, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, etc.
MultiView, the new view-anything program is only about 30K, but uses datatypes
to be able to display Guide files, animations, pictures (including remapping),
and to play sounds, of any format (as long as there is a datatype subclass
available). This is going to be the system-friendly way to support 16-bit
sounds when the hardware is available, I imagine.

>         Now for some great news -- the standard (ASL) file requester
> operates MUCH MUCH faster than in version 2.04.  I opened a file requester
> and stretched it to fill the entire screen.  Then I listed the c: directory
> (fairly large on this dealer's machine).  There was a half second of delay,
> and then all the filenames appeared instantaneously, and in sorted order.
> Wonderful.

This is probably due to 3.0's Directory Cacheing file system, which caches
directories for VERY FAST file access - NOTE: A3000 soft-roms WILL NOT boot
a DC partition!

>         One bad thing I noticed:  when flipping screens between interlaced
> and non-interlaced screens (pressing Left-Amiga-M), the A1960 monitor image
> made a big and awful-looking "jump" as it switched resolutions.  I don't know

It was probably switching scanning rates - some monitors "jump" when they
change rates (ever see a PC VGA display go from text to graphics?)

> rumors -- I don't know if DiskSalv comes with 3.0 or whether the dealer
> put it on disk himself.]

DiskSalv comes with 3.0 now. YAY!


Don't forget... LAYERS is sped up about 8 times. Windows really ZIP!

>  //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
> | Dan Barrett -- Dept of Computer Science, Lederle Graduate Research Center |
> | University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA  01003  --  barrett@cs.umass.edu |
>  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
-- 
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* Paul Miller                         |Nobody cares about my opinion anyway*
* Certified Amiga Developer           |                                    *
* INTERNET: pmiller@csugrad.cs.vt.edu |    - Have a JOLT and a smile! -    *
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* "What IS it, man?"                                "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" *
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc