UD140469@NDSUVM1.BITNET (10/18/87)
the net, so I thought I bring them up. The first is Compute!'s Technical
Reference Guide, Atari ST Volume One: VDI. As one might expect, it's all
about the VDI. I realize this one's been out a while, but I still haven't
seen any mention of it. I've read through it, and it seems fairly complete,
but since I haven't yet tried to do much with VDI I don't know... The first
half of the book leads you through VDI, showing you examples on the way. The
second half is a reference on all the VDI functions (each entry gets a page in
the book). There are several appendices, including three indices (indexes?).
Example programs are in BASIC, assembly, and (mostly) C. It lists for $18.95.
The second book just, as far as I know, came out. It's called Atari ST
Application Programming, from Bantam Computer Books. It covers a whole bunch
of stuff, including sound, graphics techniques, AES/VDI, windows, etc. It has
a "C function reference guide" which looks to contain most of the calls (in
alphabetical order). There isn't any in depth discussion of BIOS/XBIOS/GEMDOS
as far as I've found (although the individual calls are discussed in the ref.
guide). Sample programs appear to be all in C. Again there are several nice
appendices and a complete index. The book is 530 pages long (the Compute!
book is 343 pages long).
Anyone else see any new books? Frankly, I was shocked to see B. Dalton's/
Waldens carrying these books, especially in North Dakota (of course, they seem
to get in two copies of each and that's it).
Scott Udell
UD140469@NDSUVM1.BITNET
(Path? Path you ask? Ich habe
keine Ahnung...)--sorry for the
bad German, I couldn't resist...
*davidli@umn-cs.UUCP (Dave Meile) (10/20/87)
I've got both of the books Scott mentioned in his post (Compute!'s book on VDI and Bantam's Atari ST Applications Programming). I've even been going through the Compute! book examples using Mark Johnson's C compiler. It is there that I have a question... When opening a virtual workstation to the screen, is it possible to switch to NDC coordinates? According to the Compute! book (which may be in error), with GDOS resident this should be possible. It is the basis for one of their examples called, appropriately, NDC.C. They open a virtual workstation using Raster coordinates and then open another one using NDC coordinates. Meanwhile, according to the Bantam book, as long as the physical workstation was opened using Raster coordinates, any virtual workstation opened after it can only have Raster coordinates. Which version of the story is correct? -- Dave Meile