[comp.sys.amiga.tech] Help with 2.0 newscreen for SuperView author

drtiller@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Donald Richard Tillery Jr) (10/06/90)

The president of our users group is the author of the best (IMHO) IFF viewer
available!  He is currently working on the upgrade to 3.0 (tentatively called
3.1) but just received a decidedly nasty blow:

Supeview has a routine (which he authored of course) which will read in the
appropriate BMHD, color tables etc. (I'm no IFF guru, just the relay man) and
then reads in and decodes the picture to memory.  The it returns where the
screen is opened.  This technique is necessary to handle SHAM and superbitmap
pictures.  Unfortunately, as David found out this week by trying out his program
on a 2.02 developer's machine (I know, that violates the non-disclosure thingy,
but heaven forbid we support PD authors who make little if any money on their
work as much as the commercial software companies.  What's a little test to
save the PD author the deluge of mail when his program crashes under the new
OS that he hasn't even seen - editorial comment), this method fails miserably.
In 1.3, intuition erased the area under the title bar.  He fixed this by
blitting this area until after the screen was opened (behind of course) and
then replacing the area.  Well as of 2.02, the whole screen is cleared when
a newscreen is opened.  Now SuperView doesn't work AT ALL!  Well, as David
said "They are clearing the bitmap that I pass them, I just hope they left me
a flag that I can set to stop that."  WELL?  Any 2.0 gurus out there know how
he can get around this?  By having to open up the screen before decoding the
picture, superbitmaps and SHAMs require him to close the screen and re-open
it when it is discovered that they are such things.  Since these chunks aren't
always near the beginning, this is very inefficient and would slow things
considerably.  Any help would be greatly appreciated and will be passed on
verbatim to David.  Thanx.

Rick Tillery 

jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (10/08/90)

In article <1990Oct5.184813.4535@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> drtiller@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Donald Richard Tillery Jr) writes:
>then replacing the area.  Well as of 2.02, the whole screen is cleared when
>a newscreen is opened.  Now SuperView doesn't work AT ALL!  Well, as David
>said "They are clearing the bitmap that I pass them, I just hope they left me
>a flag that I can set to stop that."  WELL?  Any 2.0 gurus out there know how

	This has been fixed.  Don't worry, in the later versions of 2.02 beta
the problem was fixed, and it works as it did in 1.3.

-- 
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"

ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com (Hans Ridder) (10/09/90)

In article <14939@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) writes:
>In article <1990Oct5.184813.4535@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> drtiller@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Donald Richard Tillery Jr) writes:
>>then replacing the area.  Well as of 2.02, the whole screen is cleared when
>>a newscreen is opened.  Now SuperView doesn't work AT ALL!  Well, as David
>>said "They are clearing the bitmap that I pass them, I just hope they left me
>>a flag that I can set to stop that."  WELL?  Any 2.0 gurus out there know how
>
>	This has been fixed.  Don't worry, in the later versions of 2.02 beta
>the problem was fixed, and it works as it did in 1.3.
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You mean it's back to clearing out the "menu bar" area on on screens
opened with the CUSTOMBITMAP and SCREENQUIET flags?

>Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.

-hans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Hans-Gabriel Ridder			Digital Equipment Corporation
  ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com		Customer Support Center
  ...decwrl!elvira.enet!ridder		Colorado Springs, CO

peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) (10/09/90)

In article <1783@shodha.enet.dec.com> ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com (Hans Ridder) writes:
>In article <14939@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) writes:
>>	This has been fixed.  Don't worry, in the later versions of 2.02 beta
>>the problem was fixed, and it works as it did in 1.3.
>                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>You mean it's back to clearing out the "menu bar" area on on screens
>opened with the CUSTOMBITMAP and SCREENQUIET flags?

No.  Things work AS THEY SHOULD, meaning that SCREENQUIET is
truly quiet (true for 2.0 and up) and CUSTOMBITMAP works fine
(it did in 1.3, 2.00, 2.01, and 2.02, and ...).

Raising alarm over the performance of beta software is inappropriate,
in my opinion.  Problems should be sent c/o your favorite engineer,
or better yet, to

	bugs@cbmvax.commodore.com

>-hans

     Peter
--
     Peter Cherna, Software Engineer, Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
     {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!peter    peter@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
My opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.
"Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well-done." - E. Kovacs

ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com (Hans Ridder) (10/10/90)

In article <14990@cbmvax.commodore.com> peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) writes:
>In article <1783@shodha.enet.dec.com> ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com (Hans Ridder) writes:
>>In article <14939@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) writes:
>>>	This has been fixed.  Don't worry, in the later versions of 2.02 beta
>>>the problem was fixed, and it works as it did in 1.3.
>>                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>You mean it's back to clearing out the "menu bar" area on on screens
>>opened with the CUSTOMBITMAP and SCREENQUIET flags?
>
>No.  Things work AS THEY SHOULD, meaning that SCREENQUIET is
>truly quiet (true for 2.0 and up) and CUSTOMBITMAP works fine
>(it did in 1.3, 2.00, 2.01, and 2.02, and ...).

Glad to hear that these things work AS THEY SHOULD.  The SCREENQUIET
"problem" isn't noticed unless you use it with CUSTOMBITMAP, so I
referred to them together.  I wasn't trying to say that CUSTOMBITMAP was
broken.

>Raising alarm over the performance of beta software is inappropriate,
>in my opinion.  Problems should be sent c/o your favorite engineer,
>or better yet, to

Sorry if you took offense, Peter, and sorry you got the impression that
I was "raising an alarm".

The original poster said that instead of just clearing the "menu bar"
area as 1.3 did, some version of 2.0 was clearing the entire screen
(bitmap, actually).  Randell Jesup then said that it had been fixed, and
to quote: "it works as it did in 1.3."  (Look up there, "it's in there!")

I was merely trying to clarify if Commodore thought that clearing the
"menu bar" area (in 1.3) was a "feature", and would be carried into the
final release of 2.0.

It was just a question.

>     Peter

-hans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Hans-Gabriel Ridder			Digital Equipment Corporation
  ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com		Customer Support Center
  ...decwrl!elvira.enet!ridder		Colorado Springs, CO

peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) (10/11/90)

In article <1799@shodha.enet.dec.com> ridder@elvira.enet.dec.com (Hans Ridder) writes:
>In article <14990@cbmvax.commodore.com> peter@cbmvax.commodore.com (Peter Cherna) writes:
>>Raising alarm over the performance of beta software is inappropriate,
>>in my opinion.  Problems should be sent c/o your favorite engineer,
>>or better yet, to
>
>Sorry if you took offense, Peter, and sorry you got the impression that
>I was "raising an alarm".

Sorry, Hans.  I didn't mean for the comment to apply to you.
It was a general comment, but specifically intended for the person
who reported the original problem.  You were correct in expressing concern
because "works as it did in 1.3" was an unfortunate choice of words,
since Randell didn't know that there was a separate fix in this area for
2.0.  Randell really meant "works as it's supposed to".

I apologize if anyone thought my comment applied to Hans.  I should
have been more precise.

>-hans

     Peter
--
     Peter Cherna, Software Engineer, Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
     {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!peter    peter@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
My opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.
"Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well-done."