oster@ucblapis.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (06/14/86)
I translated Mr. Hawley's demo (thanks!) into LightSpeed C, made it a desk accessory, and added some bells and whistles of my own. The translation was no problem - the compiler gave two error messages about obvious, non-portable constructs. The source code for the new version is posted to net.sources.mac . I've sped it up (LightSpeed's profiler said that almost all the time wsa being spent inside LineTo, so I took LineTo out.) I added 4 different kinds of stars, that are drawn with Copybits. (The smaller ones have the copybits calls optimized into FlipPixel.) You'll find some interesting routines in the code, even if you aren't interested in a Star Trek-like stars effect. Xerox lisp machines have a similar screen hack, but their version has black holes, novas, spiral galaxies, and planets. If anyone would like to extend my version and repost it to the net, feel free. (You should add comets, Mr. Hawley.) I posted an earlier note about bugs in desk accessories written in LightSpeed C. You do have to be careful if you override a tool trap with a C procedure, and that procedure references global variables. But aside from that, the system works just the way it should, and is a joy to use. The "about" choice in LightSpeed C is yet another version of this screen hack. --- David Phillip Oster -- "The goal of Computer Science is to Arpa: oster@lapis.berkeley.edu -- build something that will last at Uucp: ucbvax!ucblapis!oster -- least until we've finished building it."