XELS@ECNCDC.BITNET.UUCP (06/16/87)
Should this possibly make it to the right place......that is, the atari16
news letter...
First off...
This may sound really dumb, but..Pete, who has the problem with his
monitor...is it possible (i'm not trying to insult your intelligence,
just a suggestion...) that you have the monitor to close to a magnetic
or electrical field ?? The power supply will give the monitor a nasty
case of the jitters...
And about line a....I have used it a bit, and I have found it to be
\
extremely easy to use, especially from Assembly language..it's actually
easier from ml than from c, as with c you have to write hook's and
all that stuff...it is also extremely fast, and if your really after
speed (and a bit of the hacker at heart) you can go into super mode
and jsr to the routines, so the processor state doesn't have to be saved
Now, this can get messy (don't attempt it from c without some excellent
hooks, as some registers WILL DIE), but fast as lightning.
I think the main thing to remember about LINEA is that you don't have
to muck about with that nasty, terrible VDI..(reminds me of cobol, it's
so damn verbose...who needs typing practice, anyway...well...ok, it's
powerfull stuff, but so's linea...). Documentation does help, but
as atari's developers package is par for the course as far as atari
doc's go..(it's erratic, and quite often just plain wrong) and they're
technical support is abhorent ("REAL programmers don't need support" is
they're basic attitude as far as i'm concerned, basiccally "We'll hold
your hand, Mr. User, just don't ask us any questions, or we're liable
to insult your intelligence"), your best bet is prolly alternative
doc's. After dumping 3 bills into the developers package, I shied
away from other purchases, but I hear there's some reasonable stuff
out there...
If it sounds like I'm giving atari a bad rap, I'm not..I love
the ST, and LINEA is one of the peaches...a must for the graphics
nut...but when will atari learn to document...oh how I long for
the good old days of the c-64 programmers ref manual...
Ed Shirey (XELS ECNCDC)