peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (02/17/88)
We're considering getting a Mac II and are having problems deciding
on what to do about monitors. We have available a Hi-Top FPD (900x720)
which is desirable because of its size (I use it daily on an SE and
would hate to give it up), but it seems a shame to get a Mac II
without a color monitor. The obvious solution is to hook up both.
My question is: How do two monitors, one color, one monochrome, work
on a Mac II? Will both monitors be restricted to displaying the same
image or can one act as an extension to the other? What are the
restrictions about using one in color and one in black and white
at the same time? Is there even room on a Mac II for two monitors!
This has to be resolved ASAP so any information would be appreciated.
--
Peter Steele Acadia Univ. Wolfville NS Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP:{uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter BITNET:Peter@Acadia
-------------Internet:Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU-------------jg2f+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jude Anand George) (02/18/88)
Peter, I have been using an Apple mono monitor and an Apple color minitor for a couple of weeks now without problems. In fact, I even have them set to different densities: the color is 8 bits/pixel and the mono is 4. Those programs that work with only 256 colors turned on will work on both monitors, as long as at least one of them is set to 256. A window that stretches over both monitors will display to the maximum resolution of each monitor, so you really have nothing to lose in terms of software power. As an aside-- I find text easier to read on the Apple color than on the Apple b&w monitor. Jude George jg2f@andrew.cmu.edu
rj0z+@andrew.cmu.edu (Robert George Johnston, Jr.) (02/19/88)
Putting two different monitors side by side with different dimensions and color abilities is perfectly alright. The Monitors cdev will allow you to set the orientation of the two monitors to each other and they will act as an extension of each other. If you are displaying a color picture on the color monitor and drag half of it over to the B&W monitor, the B&W will usually show mostly black pixels. For single color text or pictures, there really isn't a problem. Rob Johnston Carnegie Mellon Macintosh User's Group Software Librarian
olson@endor.harvard.edu (Eric K. Olson) (02/19/88)
In a recent article Robert George Johnston, Jr. writes: > > Putting two different monitors side by side with different dimensions and >color abilities is perfectly alright. The Monitors cdev will allow you to set >the orientation of the two monitors to each other and they will act as an >extension of each other. If you are displaying a color picture on the color >monitor and drag half of it over to the B&W monitor, the B&W will usually show >mostly black pixels. For single color text or pictures, there really isn't a >problem. It's no problem for the system software, true. But I have been running a SuperMac Spectrum and an Apple Monochrome (both 8-bit, although variously set to different bit depths) side by side for about 4 months. Very little thrid-party software that does Mac II specific stuff (like greyscale) works properly with two monitors (virtually all software that is written for 128K ROMs works fine on either (or straddling) screen). Image Studio (a greyscale Paint program) lets you move the window to the non-menu-bar screen but then doesn't work right until you move it back. PixelPaint works better but the tools stop working. All pop-up menus (like the .h files in LSC) always appear on the screen with the menu bar, as close as possible to the postition they should be in (i.e., pinned against the edge of the screen nearest the screen they should have popped up in). Programs (like Screensavers) that compare mouse position to screenBits.bounds don't get the real corners of the screen, making it difficult to put the mouse in the lower left corner when there's no left edge on that screen (DragWindow and other system calls have less of a problem through "judicious comparison of the rectangle passed"). The default ZoomBox code (TrackZoomBox or something like that) starts seeming a little dumb when clicking in the zoombox of a window on the SuperMac screen makes it fill the Apple Monochrome screen [I propose that it should cycle through the bounds of all attached screens and finally recycle to the non-zoomed size]. Note that with the advent of multiple screens, coordinates for windows can be negative. The upper left of the menu bar is always at Global Coordinate (0,0), but not always at the leftmost of the logical screen. It is possible to write code that does greyscale on the Mac II with arbitrary screens correctly, but it is damned difficult and my own code doesn't do it quite right yet. For most uses, the multiple screen implementation is the cleanest I have ever seen (especially considering it's compatible with software that had no idea this was coming) and extremely convenient. Currently, many Mac-II specific programs work correctly only on the screen with the menu bar (called the "Main GDevice"), but this will doubtless change as we all become smarter about programming the Mac II. -Eric "We're writing tomorrow's software yesterday." Eric K. Olson olson@endor.harvard.edu harvard!endor!olson D0760 (Name) (ArpaNet) (UseNet) (AppleLink)
cb2o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Charles Edward Batey, Jr.) (02/19/88)
Actually, if you have two monitors running on a Mac II simultaneously and one is color and the other is black and white, a color document put halfway between each monitor will be in color on the one side and in GRAY SCALES on the other side (as long as you're in 4, 16, or 256 color mode), in contrast to just black and white which was posted earlier. Ted Batey Carnegie Mellon University