getty@AMES-PRANDTL.ARPA (10/30/86)
Hi Neil:
I was in the store the other day looking at the Easydraw program, and I
was suprised to discover that GDOS is being distributed with this program.
Included with this GDOS were some fonts, device drivers, and a program named
OUTPUT.PRG.
After trying Easydraw I got a copy of PaintPro (Abacus) and tried running it.
PaintPro simply would not run with GDOS installed on the system, but ran just
fine when the system was booted without GDOS. The README file that comes
with PaintPro claimed that it would work with GDOS installed. When the program
starts the menus claimed that the Swiss font is loaded, but the program soon
bombed. The salesman at the store said he had no idea what was going on.
This all disturbs me. Apparently GDOS is already being given away in some
form with commercial software, but you are telling us that we are going to
have to pay money for it. Will the GDOS given away with software in the
future be the same thing that is going to be sold for money separately?
Is it possible in the future that some old software will not work correctly
with GDOS installed on the system? Do you have a date in mind for the
"release" of GDOS?
Thanks in advance,
Karl
"Free the masses and give them GDOS!"wingard@ncrcae.UUCP (Steve Wingard) (11/02/86)
The GDOS.PRG that Migraph has been sending out with EasyDraw for the past 7 months is strictly a prerelease version that was debugged enough to work for EasyDraw. Migraph was apparently working in an IBM -> ST cross-development environment (the IBM PC version of GDOS/VDI works fine, I guess...) and they had to have GDOS to release their program. Atari probably saw EasyDraw as a good product that would help sell quite a few ST's and worked on getting Migraph a version of GDOS that worked well enough to get EasyDraw out the door. Don't get too upset at Neil and the rest of the folks at Atari... they seem to be taking the time they need to release a really well-debugged package for us and sometimes that can take a while... all in all, I would rather wait than get a GDOS that Atari has to continually fix. And when it's really ready, I bet we'll be seeing some really fantastic software that takes advantage of all the goodies. DISCLAIMER: I don't have any affiliation with Atari (obviously.. look at the ORG line in the header!) but I think lots of us know what it's like to try to kill every bug in a complicated program as people are screaming at you to RELEASE it... -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Wingard ...!ucbvax!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!ncrcae!wingard NCR Corp., E&M-Columbia ...!decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae!wingard #include <disclamer.h> #include <sillyquote.h>
neil@atari.UUcp (Neil Harris) (11/03/86)
In article <8610302053.AA05161@ames-prandtl.ARPA>, getty@AMES-PRANDTL.ARPA writes: > I was in the store the other day looking at the Easydraw program, and I > was suprised to discover that GDOS is being distributed with this program. > Included with this GDOS were some fonts, device drivers, and a program named > OUTPUT.PRG. > > After trying Easydraw I got a copy of PaintPro (Abacus) and tried running > it. PaintPro simply would not run with GDOS installed on the system, but > ran just fine when the system was booted without GDOS. The README file > that comes with PaintPro claimed that it would work with GDOS installed. Apparently the README file was wrong. We have been looking into the compatibility issue, and have found some trouble spots -- one big problem is that programs compiled with OSS Personal Pascal don't work with GDOS. We have told OSS how to fix this. > This all disturbs me. Apparently GDOS is already being given away in some > form with commercial software, but you are telling us that we are going to > have to pay money for it. Will the GDOS given away with software in the > future be the same thing that is going to be sold for money separately? Why should it disturb you? We are licensing GDOS for use with commercial packages -- if you get the package, you get GDOS. The current thinking is to package GDOS separately for consumers who want it. EasyDraw uses a very early GDOS, under strict directions to their programmers to use only the functions we explicitely told them were working. The final version is complete now. -- --->Neil @ Atari ...{hoptoad, lll-lcc, pyramid, imagen, sun}!atari!neil BIX: neilharris CIS: 70007,1135 Delphi: NEILHARRIS GENIE: nharris WELL: neil Atari Corp. BBS 408-745-5308 US Mail: Atari Corp. 1196 Borregas Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 "I'm a 20th century man but I don't want to die here." -- Ray Davies
michael@slovax.UUCP (Michael Longe) (11/04/86)
Just for the record (I used to work for Migraph): > The GDOS.PRG that Migraph has been sending ... > is strictly a prerelease version ... More accurately, it is strictly the only version that has been available to an ST developer up to this point. Apparently it was a direct port by DRI from the PC ("We Port Bugs"). Migraph requested it and DRI gave the go-ahead to release it (and Output) with Easy-Draw. > Migraph was apparently working in an IBM -> ST > cross-development environment (the IBM PC version of GDOS/VDI works fine, > I guess...) ... No, on genuine first-generation 520's. Trying to do it from the PC would have been even more of a nightmare. The PC version of GDOS works. Just. Easy-Draw was the first program designed to use ALL of the features of GEM (working or not!). > Atari ... > worked on getting Migraph a version of GDOS that worked > well enough to get EasyDraw out the door. Atari did all they could to help, under the circumstances (some of this stuff was apparently never explicitly licensed to Atari by DRI). They also helped Migraph *beg* DRI for the changes we all may receive shortly. > Don't get too upset at Neil and the rest of the folks at Atari... I > would rather wait than get a GDOS that Atari has to continually fix. Amen! I was the lucky person who got find some of the BUGS in that version and report them to Atari and DRI. If all goes well, the new version should include mulitple font loading, hard disk support, and none of those silly boot-drive defaults (like OUTPUT.RSC and font files). Incidentally, Migraph did not "give away" GDOS with Easy-Draw. Each developer should make their own agreement with Atari and DRI, not take the stuff off the Easy-Draw disk. Finally, I suspect (and refer this to Neil for confirmation) that the GDOS itself will not be the item for sale, but the *very expensive* fonts and device drivers which it uses. Michael Longe' ..!tikal!slovax!michael ------- standard disclaimer ----------------------------------------------- Rumors are free and easy to give. ------- usual disclaimer -------------------------------------------------- Qui, moi?
bammi@cwruecmp.UUCP (Jwahar R. Bammi) (11/05/86)
In article <191@slovax.UUCP> michael@slovax.UUCP (Michael Longe) writes: >Amen! I was the lucky person who got find some of the BUGS in that >version and report them to Atari and DRI. If all goes well, the new >version should include mulitple font loading, hard disk support, and none >of those silly boot-drive defaults (like OUTPUT.RSC and font files). The version if Gdos that we recently received from Atari does indeed allow multiple font loading (from any directory), etc. One thing that i was rather surprised to find was that Ataris version of Gdos does not support NDC coordinates (Landon/Neil can you shed some light on why ??). In any case i feel NDC coordinates are quite useless, and what would be more usable are user defined world coordinates (only metafiles support them), that Gdos converts to RC in the appropriate way so that drawing primitive still come out right (at least on the screen??). Also NDC coordinates are quite useless in Gem as AES does'nt use them anyway. Can someone from DRI/Atari explain why AES was designed in this way (rather why Gem was half done??), or were NDC coordinates added into Vdi as an after thought?? -- usenet: .....!decvax!cwruecmp!bammi jwahar r. bammi csnet: bammi@case arpa: bammi%case@csnet-relay compuServe: 71515,155
chabris@husc2.UUCP (chabris) (11/05/86)
How did you get GDOS from Atari? When I called the other day, they told me
that either I had to pay the $500 licensing fee per product per year, or I
could send my software that didn't use GDOS to them "for testing". I was told
that if I wanted to do that testing myself, I should buy some commercial
software that has GDOS on the disk and use that copy.
Can anyone shed some light on this?
--
-- Christopher F. Chabris
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