ignac@electro.UUCP (Ignac Kolenko) (03/05/90)
The following (long) article is the press release posted on GEnie and
Compuserve last Friday describing Quick ST II and further upcoming products
from Branch Always Software. If you feel that this article is inappropriate
here in comp.sys.atari.st, then feel free to hit 'n' NOW and yell at me
using email. If you feel interested, please read on!!! The Quick ST II demo
will appear in comp.sys.atari.binaries within a week (i hope!)
Press release for immediate distribution to all Atari ST users.
By Darek Mihocka and Ignac Kolenko of Branch Always Software.
March 2, 1990. (C) 1990 Branch Always Software.
******************************************
Branch Always Software presents...
Quick ST II Quick Tools
Quick ST II Demo
******************************************
Hello from Canada! For a few weeks now we've been hinting that today
would be the day that we would announce some new products, and we
certainly don't want to disappoint anyone. We have information about our
new products, Quick ST II and Quick Tools, as well as a look back at the
good and the bad of 1989. This announcement is about 7 pages long, so
pour yourself a cold one, grab a chair, sit down, and start reading.
The first Quick ST was just voted the best shareware program of 1989 by
the readers of ST WORLD (U.K.) magazine. We hope these new products will
rank high in the commercial categories for the 1990 vote.
Quick ST II - Software Screen Accelerator and Desktop Customizer
----------------------------------------------------------------
Price: $19.95 U.S., $22.95 Canada, 19.95 U.K. Now shipping.
Quick ST II is a major enhancement of the Quick ST software accelerator,
and includes 5 new screen utilities. Quick ST II is a must have package
for anyone concerned with the performance of their ST. It includes:
- version 2.0 of the Quick ST software screen accelerator,
- the Quick ST II Desktop Customizer,
- the Art-ST graphics editor,
- version 1.8 of the Quick View fast file viewer, and,
- version 1.8 of the Quick Index speed benchmarker.
Quick ST 2.0 speeds up text and GEM screen output, which makes most GEM
or text based programs redraw faster, respond faster, and thus run
faster. Compared to earlier versions of Quick ST, version 2.0 is up to
100% faster, and is now compatible with almost all ST software.
Quick ST 2.0 is a software accelerator. That means that it requires no
hardware modifications, replacement of ICs, or voiding of warranties.
Quick ST 2.0 does its job by making TOS more efficient at outputting text
and graphics to the screen. It runs on all STs, from TOS 1.0 to TOS 1.6,
color or monochrome, blitter or no blitter.
In most cases, there is a 200% to 300% increase in the speed of screen
output. This was verified by not one, but three different screen
benchmarking utilities (including our own Quick Index). This is even
faster than the performance of hardware accelerators. How is this
possible? A good hardware accelerator (such as the T16 board) can only
provide about a 50%-100% speed increase, and those cheaper boards are
only good for about a 10%-30% speed increase. But instead of using this
brute force approach, Quick ST 2.0 replaces slow screen drawing code in
TOS (which contains a lot of compiled C) with small and fast assembly
language code. In one case (printing strings of text to a color monitor)
our code is over 15 times faster that that originally found in TOS.
Quick ST 2.0 now makes even better use of the blitter chip (if present),
so that even machines that do have blitter chips will execute GEM faster.
If a hardware accelerator is present, Quick ST 2.0 still provides almost
the same level of speed increases as without the board. In fact, the
combined performance of a Mega ST containing a T16 accelerator and Quick
ST 2.0 almost equals the performance of the Atari TT! (Based on benchmark
figures of TOS 3.0, the version of TOS found in the TT).
Quick ST 2.0 has many other features. It supports the 19 inch Moniterm
monitor, making the large screen faster than ever. It is compatible with
the Atari Monitor Driver and ZZ Driver, and also works with other high
resolution screen drivers.
Quick ST 2.0 uses only 20K of RAM, which is a lot less than most other
utilities, which makes it ideal for use on 512K or 1 meg systems. Even
the Control Panel uses more memory!
Quick ST 2.0 runs from the AUTO folder. Simply copy Quick ST 2.0 to the
AUTO folder of your boot disk and reboot. It is not copy protected, for
easy installation on a hard disk. Once installed, Quick ST 2.0 is
invisible and worry free.
Quick ST 2.0 supports the installation of custom desktop backgrounds and
fonts, to make your ST feel more friendly. Any DEGAS compatible medium
resolution or monochrome picture can be installed.
Like other software accelerators and the blitter chip, Quick ST 2.0 can
only speed up well behaved applications (programs that do not bypass
TOS). This excludes most video games, 8-bit, Mac, and PC emulators. Quick
ST 2.0 does not significantly speed up low resolution (320x200 mode)
since most well behaved applications do not run in low resolution.
The only other product that comes close to Quick ST 2.0's abilities costs
more than twice as much as Quick ST 2.0, uses twice as much memory as
Quick ST 2.0, doesn't support the Moniterm, has trouble supporting custom
backgrounds and fonts, and most of the time isn't even faster than Quick
ST 2.0. There has never been a better time to get Quick ST!
The Quick ST II Desktop Customizer is a companion program for Quick ST
2.0, which allows for the installation of custom background patterns and
desktop images. Although there are other public domain and commercial
utilities that install custom desktop images, none of them are as fast,
as easy to use, or support the installation of background patterns (which
saves memory).
Here's how it works. When you first turn on your computer, Quick ST 2.0
checks its configuration. It will be in one of three modes:
- normal green or gray desktop background
- custom pattern
- custom background image (requires an extra 32K of RAM).
A custom pattern allows you to replace the solid green (in color) or gray
(in monochrome) desktop background with your own custom designed pattern.
No extra RAM is required. We liked the way this feature looked on the
Mac, so we just had to give the ST this ability too.
The third option loads a DEGAS compatible picture into memory, and uses
it as the desktop background. Most GEM based programs will also use this
background image. There are plenty of images that can be on the desktop.
Calendars, reminder messages, digitized pictures, or just plain bizarre
drawings.
The Desktop Customizer, which runs as either a desk accessory or as a
regular program, allows the user to instantly change modes, from normal
background to custom fill to custom image, to load, edit, and save
patterns, and to load desktop images. The desktop background can be
changed as often as one wants, without rebooting the computer. And all
configuration information is written directly into the Quick ST 2.0
files. There is no renaming of files required, and the desktop image
files (.PI2 or .PI3 DEGAS pictures) can be located anywhere on the disk.
The Desktop Customizer contains a built-in pattern editor, and as the
pattern is edited, it is displayed on the whole desktop. On a color
monitor, the pattern can include up to 4 colors.
To help users create that desktop image that is just right, Quick ST II
includes the Art-ST shareware graphics editor, by Robert Birmingham.
Users of Quick ST II are encouraged to use this program and send a small
shareware contribution to the author, who will then provide an update.
Art-ST has all the features needed, including circles, boxes, text, cut
and paste, and is compatible with DEGAS files.
The fourth program in the Quick ST II package is Quick View 1.8. This
latest version of our text file reader runs as both a desk accessory or
as a regular program, and can also be installed to replace the desktop's
"Show Print Cancel" function. Simply double click on any text file and it
will quickly be display in 80 columns, and in 25 or 50 rows (in mono). No
other text file viewer can flip back and forth through a text file as
fast as Quick View.
Use Quick View to read README files, online magazines, source code, or
any other text, or near text file. Quick View supports standard ASCII,
UNIX text files, and Atari 8-bit text files. Because it can run as a desk
accessory, it is possible to do things like read documentation files
while running a GEM program.
Readers of ST Report online magazine will especially like the built-in
table of contents generator. Just load in an issue of ST Report, press
the Tab key, and instantly get a table of contents of the entire issue.
Then just press a letter to choose a topic, and Quick View instantly
jumps to that article. Nothing could be simpler!
The fifth program in the package is Quick Index 1.8, an upgrade to our
famous benchmarking utility that is used the world over to benchmark
hardware and software upgrades for the Atari ST. Quick Index 1.8 has been
expanded with reference benchmarks for the new Atari STe.
Quick Index benchmarks your computer in various categories: CPU
performance, disk drive performance, and screen output performance.
Quick Index will show you just how much slower your ST is without Quick
ST. It can also be used to test various hardware accelerators.
Quick Tools Volume 1 - Useful Utilities And The Quick Manager
-------------------------------------------------------------
Price: $19.95 U.S., $22.95 Canada, 19.95 U.K. Available in April.
Quick Tools Volume 1 is the second commercial offering by Branch Always
Software. It is a collection of 9 different multi-configurable utilities
(that term will be explained below!) plus the Quick Manager. The package
includes the following programs (most are version 2.0):
- Quick View (smart file viewer)
- Quick Find (fast file finder, catalogs disks)
- Quick Label (label printing utility /w mail merge)
- Quick Inf (DESKTOP.INF file editor)
- Quick Env (system environment editor)
- Quick Index (the de-facto Atari ST benchmarking software)
- Quick CLI (simple but powerful command line interface)
- Quick Control (our own easy-to-use control panel)
- Quick Lock (drive & partition read/write protector)
- Quick Manager (manages Quick Tools, calls file selector,
displays time, date, TOS version, free RAM)
As stated above, each Quick Tool is multi-configurable. This is a term we
use to describe a program's ability to work as either a desktop
application (which can be double clicked from the desktop), a desk
accessory (loadable at boot time) or as a Quick Manager Overlay, by
simply renaming the filename extension.
But you may be wondering, "what is a Quick Manager Overlay???" This
question is most easily answered by explaining the function of the Quick
Manager itself. When we started creating more and more Quick Tools, we
realized that sooner or later, somebody would try to install them all as
desk accessories and run out of room. GEM only provides support for 6
desk accessories at a time on the desktop's menu bar. What was required
was a program to manage the Quick Tools, and so Quick Manager was
created.
The Quick Manager is desk accessory which enables the user to load and
run any of the Quick Tools as if they were desk accessories, but without
using any desk accessory slots. The secret lies in the fact that Quick
Manager has its own drop down menu for installing up to 16 overlays.
A Quick Manager Overlay is simply a Quick Tool installed for use with
Quick Manager. It can be considered to be both a desk accessory and an
application, and has the benefits of both. It can be called up any time
the Quick Manager accessory is visible (such as from the desktop or from
within another GEM program), and unlike regular desk accessories,
overlays are not permanently memory resident.
In fact, Quick Manager itself uses only 15K of memory, and with all of
the Quick Tools installed, less than 60K of memory is used!
Every one of the other Quick Tools is multi-configurable. So the user can
run each Tool in one of three ways: as a standard desk accessory, as a
standard application, or as an overlay. Remember that there is a
substantial savings of memory when using overlays.
Almost any desk accessory can be converted into a Quick Manager Overlay.
Any developers interested in converting their desk accessories over to
Quick Manager Overlays can contact us for more information.
But Quick Manager does use a desk accessory slot itself. So to make up
for this, Quick Manager has other features which themself replace several
commonly used desk accessories. Quick Manager can call up the file
selector at any time by simply clicking on the "FSel" button on Quick
Manager's window. Users of custom file selector programs can thus call up
their favorite file selector with a single mouse click.
Quick Manager also displays the current time and date, version of TOS,
and free RAM. The time/date display is user configurable, and all
configuration information (including the position of Quick Manager's
window) can be saved.
Hopefully, this gives you a flavor for the functionality of the Quick
Manager and the concept of overlays and multi-configurable utilities. As
Branch Always Software develops further releases of Quick Tools they will
easily become a part of your desktop configuration.
Now, a few words about the individual Quick Tools themselves.
Quick View 2.0 is the latest generation viewing program for the Atari ST.
It will automatically determine what type of file is being viewed, and
display that file appropriately. This means that a text file will be
displayed as a text file, and a picture will be displayed as a picture,
and so on. Even ARCed files are displayed as a verbose listing of the
contents. Quick View 2.0 can be thought of as a "smart file viewer".
Quick View 2.0 can be installed to replace the desktop's "Show Print
Cancel" function (using another Quick Tool, Quick Inf). Simply by double
clicking on any non-program file on the desktop, Quick View 2.0 will load
it in and display it appropriately. No more screens of Hebrew characters!
If Quick View 2.0 can't recognize the file type, the file can be viewed
in hex mode, raw ascii, or as raw graphics. This is ideal for examining
files at the byte level.
Quick Find 2.0 is a fast file searching utility. If you have ever
wondered, "where is that .DOC file", you can find it using Quick Find
2.0. It has the ability to search any combination of drives and
partitions simultaneously, with informative directory style output going
to the screen, printer or any filename you wish. Searches can be done on
any drive, or even subdirectory within a drive. As well, a "non-
recursive" search may be done if you do not wish to search into
subdirectories. Quick Find 2.0 can completely scan all the the
directories on a 20 meg hard disk in only 5 seconds!
But wait, that's not all. Quick Find 2.0 also allows group file
modifications as well. This means that you can write protect, hide,
touch, delete or even set the TOS 1.4/1.6 fast file load bit on any group
of files you search for. And that's just a short list of possible
operations available.
Quick Label 2.0 is a multi-purpose label generation system. It has 10
buffers to handle even the biggest of multi-label jobs you can dream of.
It has provision to create and load any printer driver, plus has a full
suite of text editing commands to make that label look as slick as can
be. It also contains a very simple to use mail merge facility, so the
generation of mailing labels is a snap with Quick Label 2.0. It too can
be configured as an installed application which acts on *.LAB files (the
label files generated).
Quick Inf 2.0 is the Atari ST DESKTOP.INF file editor. It allows you to
edit the normally uneditable features of the desktop, such as drive
search masks (have you ever wanted a window to display only *.DOC files
when looking for the document you want to edit?), or the default
installed text file reader. (An ST fact: when you click on a text file,
any program you wish can be given that file rather than the standard
"Show Print Cancel" utility built into the desktop! It's just that up
until now, you couldn't change it unless you knew exactly what line in
the DESKTOP.INF file to change!)
Thus, with Quick Inf 2.0, you can customize your desktop with simple
button clicks, and even save and load multiple versions of your favourite
desktop configuration! This is a real boon to multi-user STs: each user
can have their own .INF file and by configuring Quick Inf as an installed
application, you can simply double click on any *.INF file to change the
desktop configuration. It's that easy!
Quick Env 2.0 is another handy utility since it allows the user to alter
and edit, load or save the current system environment strings. This is
especially useful for program development since all compiler information
can be placed into the environment strings, negating the need to use a
bulky command line interpreter to run your favourite compiler. More down
to earth users will appreciate the ability to take all your program's
resource files (*.RSC files) and place them in a subdirectory, and edit
the system environment string which tells the ST where to find these
files. Never again worry about remembering where those pesky resource
files reside!
Quick Index 2.0 is of course, the de-facto benchmarking utility for the
Atari ST, as described under Quick ST II. Quick Index 2.0 has Quick
Manager support.
Quick CLI 2.0 is a small but useful command line interpreter which has
the advantage of being able to run as an accessory. It contains a
complete suite of commands including DIR, COPY, RENAME, DELETE and a host
of other commands which make life easier in those moments when the
desktop just won't do. Also, Quick CLI 2.0 supports changes to the system
environment strings, as well as supporting the new Atari ST Extended
Commandline Specification released a few months ago. Since Quick CLI 2.0
is multi-configurable, you can even run it as a desk accessory, for those
emergency file operations (such as having to clear out space on a disk
before saving an important file).
Quick Control is, as the name suggests, our own Control Panel. It allows
complete customization of the standard system parameters, but, since it's
a Quick Tool, you can run it in any of the three ways described earlier.
Use it to change the time and date, edit screen colors, change the baud
rate, reconfigure the printer, and many more things.
And finally, Quick Lock 2.0 is the drive/partition protection program. It
allows the user to select drives or partitions available to the system
and either write protect them, read/write protect them (which makes that
drive basically locked to the outside world) or leave them alone. It also
has password protection so that you can lock your system, and leave your
ST unattended until you come back and enter your passoword to unlock the
system. This is especially useful for protecting a multi-user system from
prying eyes.
Hopefully the above information allows you to get a feel for the power
and versatility that the Quick Tools package offers.
Look for the Quick Tools Demo, soon to be uploaded to online information
services and bulletin boards everywhere.
Quick ST II Demo
----------------
A lot of Quick ST users have commented that they didn't fully appreciate
what Quick ST did for them until they had to use a computer without it.
It's like trading in 10 speed bike for a 3 speed bike. They thought
something was wrong, because everything became a lot slower, but then
they realized that Quick ST was not installed.
We would like all Atari ST users to experience this, so we have released
a demo of Quick ST II. The demo package includes demo versions of Quick
ST 2.0 and the Desktop Customizer, and several sample desktop patterns
and pictures.
This demo is now available for download from the Atari ST libraries of
the online services Compuserve, GEnie, Delphi, BIX, and Usenet. We expect
that it will soon be available from most Atari ST bulletin boards as it
gets copied around by other users.
A disk containing the demo can also be ordered from us.
The demo has certain limitations, otherwise it wouldn't be a demo. For
one thing, the demo runs slower than the real thing, but still
considerably faster than just plain old TOS. The demo of the Desktop
Customizer has all Save options disabled. The demo displays a prompt to
remind you that it is a demo, and also uses more than 20K of RAM. To get
the full speed 20K no limitations version, simply buy Quick ST II.
Speaking of demos, be sure to drop by the Branch Always Software booth at
the Second Canadian Atari Users Convention, being held on April 1 in
Toronto, Canada, at the Airport Hilton. The show is being put on by the
Toronto Atari Federation user group, and promises to be a blast. Later in
April, catch us at the Atari show in Pittsburg.
Our products will also be on sale at the World Of Atari show in April.
Ordering and Upgrading
----------------------
We are expanding our dealer network, so that the new software will be
available through more dealers in Canada, the United States, and the
United Kingdom. We should have dealers in other European countries soon.
Quick ST II is now shipping and should be available at all dealers within
a few weeks. Then we will begin shipping Quick Tools, and also release
the Quick Tools Demo to the public. As we found out the hard way, it is
impossible to ship two products simultaneously when both members of
Branch Always Software are also trying to write exams and graduate from
college. So bear with us. Two more months and we're free!
If for some reason your Atari dealer does not stock our products, or you
just wish to order direct, send a check or money order to our address:
Branch Always Software
PO Box 2624, Station B
Kitchener, Ontario
Canada N2H 6N2
In Canada or the U.S., add $3 for postage and handling. In the U.K., add
2. All other countries, add $5. We accept payment in Canadian dollars,
U.S. dollars, and pound sterling. For fastest service, please enclose the
correct amount. Residents of Ontario, please add 8% tax.
A disk containing the Quick ST II Demo and the Quick Tools Demo is
available for $2, plus postage and handling as above.
We are also setting up a VISA card order line, and we will ship just
about anywhere in the world. If calling from outside of North America,
remember to dial the appropriate codes for Canada.
Order line: 519-570-4340
Inquiries: 519-747-0386
Registered users of Quick ST can upgrade to Quick ST II for the usual $3
upgrade fee and by sending back their original disk. This only applies to
users who have already sent in their registration cards. If you haven't,
we don't know about you yet.
Registered users of the Quick Utilities can receive an upgrade disk
containing the Quick Tools. The cost is $3 and the original disk.
All previous discount offers and upgrade offers have expired. Any
shareware contributions received will be treated as orders, provided that
the correct amount is sent.
Please call our inquiries line for more information.
--
=====Ignac A. Kolenko (The Ig)=====watmath!watcgl!electro!brasoft!ignac======
co-author of QuickST, and the entire line of Quick Software!!!!
Branch Always Software Box 2624, Station B, Kitchener, Ont. CANADA N2H 6N2
=============================================================================