From: moon!cyberden!phbill@well.sf.ca.us
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: CGS and all that good stuff...
Date: 18 Aug 92 00:13:22 GMT
Organization: Indescribable Creations

ab588@yfn.ysu.edu (joseph sabatino) writes:

> Hi Bill, remember me? I think you called my board once or twice. 
> anyways, your message on the net was sent to me for a personal reply.
>  
>      First of all, I'm sorry that you didn't like using the CGS handler. I 
> spent alot of time and effort into it, trying to do two things. First, 
> to establish some kind of graphic standard for XL/E computers. The 
> second thing was to provide a handler which works with the BEST term 
> program ever written for these machines. From the many users that 
> choose CGS mode on my bbs, and from the many Oasis, Pro!, and Carina 
> sysops who download and use the CGS bbs modules, I guess it has made 
> telecom more enjoyable for more than a few people.
a
Well, like I said before, 1) the fonts don't look very good on my system, 
PROBABLY because MOST users (I am DEFINITELY one of the majority of users 
anymore!) have GOOD monitors and DON'T have this crappy 1200xl video. 
(tho I haven't compared it, lately since I have tons of video stuff 
hooked up and the computer has to go thru a REALLY old VCR!, I must admit 
it could've been made QUITE a bit better.)  I do agree that choosing CGS 
to work with BobTerm was a DEFINITE plus, but since I 1) have no CGS 
boards to call, and 2) boot always from one system disk (which ONLY 
installs Hyper E: and jumps to MyDOS (I have the /4(-digit) version)..I 
don't have ANY extra RAM, and hate dealing with Atari DOS/MyDOS 1050 
density problems), I only ever use the unchanged/upgraded/patched/whatever
 you'd call it version of BobTerm (1.22).  I SUPPOSE that, though you 
were (unlike many programmers.. at least a few years back) smart enough 
to make this fully compatible with everything you could think of, I have 
these problems:

dedication to MyDOS, as well as having 100s of AtariDOS disks.  
        I'll never go back to Atari DOS for fear of messing up one of my 
        newer MyDOS disks

I have a 1200xl (could be the reason for the crashes I got with CGS ever
        so often)

I have a 1200xl and a ***tty TV for a monitor.., again, wired via VCR, as
        WELL as having a switchbox connected right at the TV's cable 
        input

I never use Sparta DOS (call me different, but I don't like it much, esp.
        since I'm a TurboBASIC XL fan, and TBXL doesn't work with any but
        the cart.version)

and finally:    nowhere to call.  The only 8-bit BBS I call doesn't even
        use ATASCII, which is a shame because I always liked even that.

I guess I jumped the gun a bit because I never saw anything ACTUALLY use
        the thing, and I also have an older version (I believe it came 
        with 10 or less fonts..  we seem to be getting new software 
        rather slow here in the bay area...)

...
>  
>      If you think setting up CGS is a pain, try installing some drivers (by 
> hand) on an IBM system. Without an auto-install program, it can take 
> several hours, or even days.

Ah...  I must give you that!! :)  This is one of 100s of reasons I'll 
probably NEVER get an IBM  ;)

>  
>      The CGS handler can work with any decent dos that allows normal 
> alpha numeric characters for filenames. If you are using a version 
> of MyDos that doesn't support this, then I suggest that you switch to 
> Sparta 3.2d.

As I said, I have something like version 4.53/4 of MyDOS and the minute I 
saw that ARC full of numbers for filenames, I said "screw this!", but 
since I was pretty interested at the time, I finally got the attempting 
to set it up.

>  
>      There are now 20 official CGS fonts, with several more recently 
> submitted for inclusion on the official CGS font assignment list. 
> These fonts have been sent in from all around the world. Just this week, 
> I assisted a sysop in Amsterdam Holland in getting his bbs to support 
> CGS. CGS boards are poping up all around the world. But anyways, the 
> CGS font system is very flexible, allowing up to 99 fonts to be 
> installed at any one time. This ammounts to 101,376 bytes of font 
> data! Granted, I doubt that any bbs will ever require THAT many fonts to 
> be online at any one time. But most will have anywhere between five thru 
> a dozen. 

As I said, I guess the version I can with is rather old, as it had (I 
believe) 10 or less fonts.

>  
>      CGS is much more than just fonts. It also includes colors and 
> graphics. The fonts are just the easiest and quickest to use. 

Well... Since I've never called anywhere that supports it, I can't say 
I'm either impressed, or disgusted by it! ;)  My MAIN reason for bringing 
these things up is 1) I wondered if there was any other program that 
could handle this type of stuff, and 2) how hard it would be to make the 
fonts have one extra letter in them.  Hell, how about rather than have 
"0.0" to "9.9", how about "A.0" to "J.9"??!??!  Or even "A.A" to "J.J"??  
It would be REALLY nice for the users of Atari DOS 2.0 (it doesn't allow 
numbers in names, does it?) and MyDOS (IS there a version that allows 
numbers??)

>  
>      One of the main reasons why the CGS handler doesn't exclusivly draw 
> text to a graphics screen, is because such a system couldn't keep up with 
> 9600 baud. If it can't handle 9600, I'm not interested in it. BobTerm/CGS 
> can easily handle 9600 baud.

That's true. (call me one to be blind about 1200 baud ;) ).  HOWEVER, 
what types of drawing routines do you use?  I think it would take just as 
much time, if not less to POKE the characters onto the screen.  My only 
way of elaborating is to give a BASIC equivelent:

FOR J=0 TO 7  
  POKE SCREEN+X+(Y+J)*40,CHARACTER*8+J
NEXT J

SCREEN is the top of screen memory, X is the x position on the screen (0 
to 39), Y is the y position (0 to 183, unless you don't mind it going 
below the screen), and CHARACTER is the internal character set code for 
what you want to be written to the screen.  A routine like this in 
assembly... hell, anything faster than BASIC, could probably keep up with 
9600 baud.. esp. if buffering and [^S](pause)-ing is done...

This is my major idea for CGS, or any other graphics oriented terminal 
interface....
>  
>      The fonts don't HAVE to be in a ramdisk. They can also be placed on a 
> hard drive. The reason why they cannot be placed on a normal floppy 
> disk is because they are too slow. Another reason is because of 
> something called concurrent i/o. Simply put, if you have concurrent 
> mode enabled for a modem, and try any i/o to a normal floppy drive, you 
> will crash the operating system. Period.

Well...THIS is obvious, even to ME! (esp. since I'm using 2 stock 1050s!  
haahhaah)



I think you've stated your point clearly..   I'm reading it as this:

        upgrade!!! :)

I need more RAM and maybe a copy of SDX or SRP ;) 


Just don't forget my ideas!: 1) letters instead of numbers for fonts (a 
simple little BASIC program could patch up anybody's old version of the 
program..  just rename all the files.)  and 2) the quick 40 column text 
writing...  it takes very little memory and doesn't use much FP, so it 
could easily handle 9600 if the other graphics routines can. (btw: can 
CGS do a fill???)


                Sorry for jumping the gun like I did (I didn't mean to 
                                                      totall SHRED your
                                                      program or anything
                                                      !!!  It's just I 
                                                      could see it being
                                                      made a little e-zer
                                                        to use for us 
stock users ;) )

"Be seeing you!"
___________________________ ||| __
PhBill: Bill Kendrick      / | \
moon!cyberden!phbill@well.sf.ca.us
__________________________________
                   August 17, 1992