Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: THE STORM Allan Page
From: sheppard_r@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Date: 5 Nov 1992 10:13:14 GMT
Reply-To: sheppard_r@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: Wellington City Council (Public Access), Wgtn, Nz
NNTP-Posting-Host: kosmos.wcc.govt.nz

Well here is one more bit that I found care of ST-Report 837...


Alan Page, the author of STORM, tells us:


     "Storm is completely different from Flash. It's also completely
     redesigned. As much as possible I made it modular and internally
     multitasking. The terminal emulations and file transfers are loadable
     modules. Right now I have CompuServe Vidtex (which is a whole lot like
     VT52) and TTY. Current file transfer modules are X/Ymodem and CIS
     BPlus with resumable downloads.

     The editor is in a resizable movable window with FULL word wrap. e.g.
     delete and backspace will activate wordwrap. No more hitting the F10
     key to reformat. You can have as many editing windows as GEM will let
     you (with MultiTOS, the number of windows seems to be limited only by
     memory).

     The capture buffer is an editor window, but with the special property
     that text gets added to the end of it from the serial port. You can
     create a new capture buffer and turn the old one into a regular edit
     window. You can edit a file at the same time text is being captured.

     File transfers run in the background. Not full background/reset-proof
     like Shadow, but better than STalker which stops when you enter the
     menu bar.

     Command language is a full Basic interpreter. It also multitasks with
     the rest of the program. So you can run Basic, edit files, do file
     transfers, all at the same time. Basic has re-entrant execution. So if
     you define a function key to execute a Basic command, it stops the
     current Basic program, creates a new Basic interpreter (less than 1K
     overhead), runs the function key macro, then the current Basic program
     restarts. Same thing for the dial directory autologon.

     Basic (and the rest of the program) allocate memory sparingly and
     release memory back to the system. The program is completely MultiTOS
     compatible and in fact run 90% of the time in MultiTOS.

     Storm also supports the Atari clipboard for cut and paste. I use a
     custom font and driver for extra speed. However, it doesn't cheat with
     GEM and works on TT and should work on other programs. It's 12 pixels
     high with monochrome so you get 24 lines in a window with room for a
     typeahead."

 Albert Dayes asks some good questions:


     "Within the Window does STORM give you 80 columns?  In some other
     windowing software one gets less than 80 columns due to the scroll
     bars etc?  Also is there a 132 column mode?  Since everything is
     loadable one should be able to create almost any type of emulation. 
     Will there be a special developer kit for this or will it be included
     in the program?"


 Alan Page answers:


     "You get 80 columns in the terminal window. There is not as yet 132
     columns. I will probably have 132 columns, but you would have to
     scroll unless you have a machine with higher resolution graphics.  I
     will release source code for the loadable emulations at some point. I
     will probably not have documented it enough to release it at the time
     we ship Storm because getting the program out is the #1 priority."


 Hal Dougherty asks Alan Page:


 "Didn't you write the original Flash?"


 Alan answers:


     "Yes I wrote the original Flash. However, Antic Publishing owned the
     trademark. Apparently, before they went bust they sold the trademark
     (even though they owed me $$). Storm is a completely new program. Not
     a line of code from the original Flash is in it."


Brought to you by ST-Report 837..

If you bury your head in the sand and don't read ST-Report thats your problem,
there are otheres here that have access to GEnie but do nothing for the net,
how about getting of your buts and doing some thing postive..:-)...


Also those of you that will never know as you have me in your kill files, well
all I can say get a New Brain as you do nead one...


Roger.............

I don't live by kill files but by my intellegence....


I wish more netters had some of that...??


                              sheppard_r@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz