 
INFO-ATARI16 Digest         Thu, 26 Apr 90       Volume 90 : Issue  479
 
Today's Topics:
               extended commandline arguments (2 msgs)
                             File Servers
        Proposed change to names of sources/binaries postings
                         ST and a Juki 6100?
              summary of responses: changing resolutions
                    The Phantom Typist - So What?
                    yet another feature of TOS 1.4
                  yet another little bug in TOS 1.4
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 90 11:23:34 MSZ
From: ONM07%DMSWWU1A.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Julian Reschke)
Subject: extended commandline arguments
Message-ID: <9004260823.AA03307@freya.dmswwu-ether>
 
In article <1650@electro.UUCP> Ignac Kolenko writes:
> what is the most prevelant (sp?) extended commandline protocol used
> in the Atari world. what i'm trying to get at is if it would be worth
> bothering to implement the Atari Extended GEMDOS Commandline Argument
> Spec posted by Ken B. many months ago, or implement something more
> along the lines of the Mark Williams spec, since i am assuming that
> MUCH more software can understand the latter, although the former is now
> the de-facto Atari supported standard. So which would be better to
> implement??
That's easy. Ataris specification ist THE standard, so PLEASE use it.
Other shells (Gemini 1.1, Master) do it, too!
 
___________________________ cut here _____________________________________
Julian F. Reschke, Hensenstr. 142, D-4400 Muenster, Phone: ++49 251 861241
eMail: ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET, "Julian Reschke" @ MAUS MS  (++49 251 77216)
____________________ correct me if I'm wrong _____________________________
 
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 25 Apr 90 17:45:21 GMT
From: eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!unido!sbsvax!roeder@bloom-beacon.mit.edu  (Edgar
 Roeder)
Subject: extended commandline arguments
Message-ID: <4054@sbsvax.cs.uni-sb.de>
 
In article <1650@electro.UUCP>, ignac@electro.UUCP (Ignac Kolenko) writes:
>
> what is the most prevelant (sp?) extended commandline protocol used
> in the Atari world. what i'm trying to get at is if it would be worth
> bothering to implement the Atari Extended GEMDOS Commandline Argument
> Spec posted by Ken B. many months ago, or implement something more
> along the lines of the Mark Williams spec, since i am assuming that
> MUCH more software can understand the latter, although the former is now
> the de-facto Atari supported standard. So which would be better to
> implement??
>
 
The Atari standard has inherent problems with any old software expecting the
length byte in the basepage to be valid. Programming languages like Pascal or
Modula might use it since their string format is exactly what Atari once
documented as the format of the arguments in the basepage (one length byte
plus the text of the string). You will get strange effects when a program
gets the wrong value here.
 
You can observe the effect for example if you use the ff3 (file-finder) program
posted some month ago in comp.binaries.atari.st with the Atari-standard (in the
recently posted Master-demo for instance you can try out the Atari standard
with "xargs 10" ?== 8 + 2 for length byte 127 + MWC arguments and handle 2 is
console?). The display is at least very strange and almost unreadable (The file
finder was compiled with Pascal!).
 
> if the Mark Williams spec is the better one to implement, then what exactly
> is their spec. I know it's similar, but i need details ...
>
 
The MWC standard uses a valid length byte and the value of the ARGV environment
variable has a special meaning. It is interpreted as "i/o-vector". For any
handle (from 0 to 20) the corresponding position in the i/o-vector is
        A       if the handle points to AUX:,
        C       if the handle is for CON:,
        F       if the handle points to an open file,
        P       if the handle refers to PRN: and
        ?       if the type is unknown or no file is opened with this handle.
The rest of the environment after ARGV=i/o-vector is a NUL-seperated list of the
arguments passed to the program. I think the MWC-tools also pass 127 as length
of the commandline (like the Atari specs say). So the only differences between
MWC and Atari is the meaning of the value of ARGV (i/o-vector vs. no meaning)
and possibly the passing of an invalid length byte (127) to validate the
arguments.
 
Because of the problems mentioned above, you should at least give the user the
opportunity to switch off the extended argument passing when using old progs
expecting a valid length byte (and not checking wether it's reasonable).
 
> --
> =====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
> =============================================================================
 
        - Edgar
--
 
Mail:  Edgar R\"oder                    E-Mail: roeder@cs.uni-sb.de
       Liesbet-Dill-Stra\ss e 3
D-6602 Dudweiler                               -o-   -o-
       W-Germany                                   ~
Phone: 06897/74643                               '---'
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 25 Apr 90 23:12:16 GMT
From: zephyr.ens.tek.com!orca.wv.tek.com!pogo!bluneski@uunet.uu.net  (Bob
 Luneski)
Subject: File Servers
Message-ID: <8965@pogo.WV.TEK.COM>
 
Does anyone know the address of an archive site with Atari ST files that
has a file server for us poor folks without Internet ftp access??
 
Thanks a bunch,
____________________________________________________________________________
  Bob Luneski
  Diamond Back Support Hotline:  bluneski@pogo.WV.TEK.COM
                                 Genie: B.LUNESKI1
 
  The opinions expressed herein are my own and in no way reflect the
  opinions of Tektronix, Inc.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 25 Apr 90 10:09:42 GMT
From: mcsun!inria!laas!ralph@uunet.uu.net  (Ralph P. Sobek)
Subject: Proposed change to names of sources/binaries postings
Message-ID: <RALPH.90Apr25120942@orion.laas.fr>
 
In article <1588@male.EBay.Sun.COM> koreth@panarthea.ebay.sun.com (Steven Grimm)
 writes:
|   Someone has suggested that since software to automatically save news
 articles
|   using the filename in the "Archive-name" pseudo-header line, I should stop
|   calling the articles program/part01, program/part02, etc. and start calling
|   them program/program.uaa, program/program.uab, and so on.  This would enable
|   Dumas uud to pick up the parts effortlessly.
 
In article <11706@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
 writes:
|     No changes to the Dumas uud program are necessary. The program is pretty
|     smart, it does a two-part search for the continuation files already. First
|     it looks for the named file, e.g. program.uab, but if that file doesn't
|     exist it merely continues to read its current input file. So, to decode a
|     multipart posting, merely
|          cat part* | uud
|     and you get the output file, no muss & no fuss.
 
Rather than stop calling the articles program/part01 as Howard has
suggested above and in <1599@lzsc.ATT.COM>, making references to the
breaking of software, I suggest an alternate Article or Archive header
in some form similar to:
 
        Filename: foobar.uaa
 
If an optional header is acceptable, a) current software would not be
broken, and b) software could be written, by those who want this
feature, to automatically save the file under the given name.
 
Wishlist:  for all those news hackers!!
 
What I would like, under either rn or gnus, is to be able to specify
the articles which make up some piece of software, and then have the
news software pipe the parts in the proper order to uud or unshar,
since it can accept the parts on stdin.  That way, no more messy
intermediate files to fiddle around with.
 
Oh well,
 
--
Ralph P. Sobek                    Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own.
ralph@laas.fr                              Addresses are ordered by importance.
ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph
If all else fails, try:                               sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU
===============================================================================
Reliable software should kill people reliably! -Andy Mickel, Pascal News #13,78
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 24 Apr 90 12:06:46 GMT
From: ncrlnk!ncrwic!wsuiar!mwjester@uunet.uu.net  (Max Jester)
Subject: ST and a Juki 6100?
Message-ID: <143.2633fb07@wsuiar.uucp>
 
In article <2864@ultb.isc.rit.edu>, clf3678@ultb.isc.rit.edu (C.L. Freemesser)
 writes:
> When I try to print with it, it doesn't do anything.  I've tried
> different printer drivers with WordPerfect, including a Diablo 630 and
> a regular ASCII text printer, but nothing works.
>
> I know the printer works because I tested it with an Osborne (don't
> laugh) and it worked just fine.  However, the Osborne DID use it's
> IEEE-488 port to drive the printer.  I know I can't use it for
> desktop dumps, but SHOULD be usable with WP.
>
> Any ideas AT ALL are greatly appreciated!
 
  Not all printers using a Centronics-compatible hardware interface meet the
timing specs required to work with the ST.  In particular, various 'off'
brands seem prone to problems - e.g. the Olivetti electrostatic printer that
DAK was selling several years ago.
 
  One possibility that may or may not help - a buffer.  For whatever reason,
they frequently are more forgiving with respect to timing.  But I would try
before I buy, unless you need one anyway.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Max J.
 
--Life is short.  Eat dessert first.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 25 Apr 90 22:01:27 GMT
From:
 swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!nuug!ifi!kjetilho@ucsd.edu
 (Kjetil Torgrim Homme)
Subject: summary of responses: changing resolutions
Message-ID: <2930@ifi.uio.no>
 
A very simple solution:
Use an editor that's not based on GEM... This should allow
you to switch resoultion.
 
GEM only slows editors down anyway!!!
 
 
Only my humble opinion,
 
Kjetil T.
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 26 Apr 90 00:11:26 GMT
From: ncs.dnd.ca!balkwill@rutgers.edu  (R. J. Balkwill)
Subject: The Phantom Typist - So What?
Message-ID: <877@ncs.dnd.ca>
 
I don't doubt that the PT exists - neither, I suspect, does Atari.
But in all the flames I've read about this against Atari I haven't
read anyone explicitly mentionning the fact that the programs in which
this 'TOS' bug occur seem to all be ones that screw around with the
system I/O vectors.  How else could Word Perfect (the most frequently
cited example) offer you choices of how to enter the menu bar.
Another program recently mentionned is Spectre, and I'm darned if I
know how an emulator for another OS could AVOID screwing around with
same.
 
The 68000 chip has a supervisor mode which could prevent any of this
but TOS (or Gemdos) chooses to give the user access to supervisor mode
specific operations such as changing vectors, or anything else for
that matter.  When an application does these things how in Heaven's
name do you expect the OS people to take responsibility.  Your machine
isn't even executing their code!
 
As for WP, it's so full of bugs in the Atari version that one more, or
a hundred more bugs wouldn't surprise me at all.  It especially does
not like maccel2.prg which also has notions about how the mouse, and
hence I/O in general, ought to be handled.  Still, since WP has given
up on the Atari I guess some people just have to flame someone.
---
Bob
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 25 Apr 90 17:28:04 GMT
From: att!dptg!lzsc!hcj@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (HC Johnson)
Subject: yet another feature of TOS 1.4
Message-ID: <1669@lzsc.ATT.COM>
 
Yet another "feature" of TOS 1.4.
 
I use wildcards in desktop.inf to display only part of a folder.
I find that two such, as in P*D*.prg does not work.  OK, so I'm limited
to one *.
Now I find that 2*.prg works, listing only programs starting with 2.
BUT, *2.prg, which should find programs inding in 2, like pcditto2.prg,
list none of these; but does list pc_d.2 !
 
Now that is a feature!
 
Howard C. Johnson
ATT Bell Labs
att!lzsc!hcj
hcj@lzsc.att.com
 
------------------------------
 
Date: 26 Apr 90 08:36:27 GMT
From: mcsun!hp4nl!nikhefh!t19@uunet.uu.net  (Geert J v Oldenborgh)
Subject: yet another little bug in TOS 1.4
Message-ID: <837@nikhefh.nikhef.nl>
 
The GEMDOS cache does not seem to know whether a drive is mounted or not:
 
# create a 100 K ramdisk on g:
$ ramdisk -c g 100
$ touch g:/aap
$ ls -altFv g:/
g:/
a----w          0  Apr-26-1990  10:32:06   aap
Total 0 bytes in 1 files
# destroy the ramdisk.
$ ramdisk -d g
$ df g
g: drive not mounted
# but .....
$ ls -altFv g:/
g:/
a----w          0  Apr-26-1990  10:32:06   aap
Total 0 bytes in 1 files
 
(though there is nothing much one can do with this file...)
 
------------------------------
 
End of INFO-ATARI16 Digest V90 Issue #479
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