Corrections and Updates to the Degas Elite Manual October 31, 1986 IMPORTANT: Due to limitations of available memory, the Atari 520ST can normally support only TWO workscreens. You can increase this to three by not booting with GDOS in the AUTO folder, but it also means you can only use the System font in your pictures. The 1040ST can support up to eight workscreens, with full font capability. You can reduce the number of workscreens by booting the program while holding down the Alternate key. Fewer workscreens means more room in memory for fonts. Page 56: Booting the Program When you turn on your computer, you must have several items on the boot disk: The GDOS program in a folder called AUTO The ASSIGN.SYS file in the root directory If you don't have these on your boot disk, you will not be able to load any fonts into Degas Elite. Any fonts you want to load should be together in a folder or a root directory. Make sure the disk is in the proper drive before you load the Elite program. If you only have one drive, put the font files on the same disk as Degas Elite. Once Degas Elite has loaded, you can remove the disk and replace it with a disk for your pictures, fill patterns, brushes and blocks. The ASSIGN.SYS file contains a list of fonts to load. These names should be the same as the font filenames on your disk. If you change the files in the ASSIGN.SYS file, you MUST reboot your computer with GDOS in the AUTO folder to install the fonts in Degas Elite. Page 66: Appendix C revision Notes: GDOS and ASSIGN.SYS: Due to last-minutes changes in GDOS by Atari Corp., the information on the ASSIGN.SYS file in Appendix C is not quite correct. Here are the corrections and a new sample file: * You must put the names of all the font files you want to load, after the screen type descriptor (screen.sys sections 01, 02, 03, 04, shown below) for that resolution. Screen 01 is a default mode (unused in Degas Elite), 02 is low resolution, 03 is medium resolution, 04 is high resolution (monochrome). With this setup, you can set up your ASSIGN.SYS file so that you have specific fonts assigned to each resolution. * The location of the font files must be specified by first specifying a path and folder on the first line. * Comments may be included in the file if prefixed with a semicolon (";"). Here is the ASSIGN.SYS file that comes on your Degas Elite distribution disk: path = a:\fonts\ ;Pathname containing fonts ; 01p screen.sys ;Default screen ; ; 02p screen.sys ;Low-resolution screen ; COMPHS08.FNT COMPSS16.FNT COMPDS32.FNT COMPHD08.FNT COMPSD16.FNT COMPDD32.FNT ; 03p screen.sys ;Medium-resolution screen ; COMPHS08.FNT COMPSS16.FNT COMPDS32.FNT COMPHD08.FNT COMPSD16.FNT COMPDD32.FNT ; 04p screen.sys ;High-resolution screen ; COMPHS08.FNT COMPSS16.FNT COMPDS32.FNT COMPHD08.FNT COMPSD16.FNT COMPDD32.FNT ; 21 fx80.sys ;default printer driver 31 META.SYS ;meta file driver ^Z These files were all created by converting a single Degas font file (see below) called COMPUTER.FNT. The font editor creates only a 16 point file, but the converter changes it into separate GEM files for different sizes. Any font file not names on this list will not be loaded, even if in the same location as other font files. If two font files share the same id number, only one will load. If you change the ASSIGN.SYS file, you must reboot the computer with GDOS in an AUTO folder in order for your changes to take effect. Page 67: The Font Conversion Program: Degas-to-GEM Font Converter Version 1.1 This program converts the special Degas font files into aformat which the GDOS program can use. Background. The original Degas program used a built-in function which allowed the user to size a font to one of six sizes. This was necessary because at the time Degas was written, there was no way to load GEM font files into the ST. When Atari GDOS became available, we decided to utilize the GDOS font-loading ability. Because there is a large number of Degas fonts available and GDOS will not load them as is, this converter program was written so that the Degas fonts could be used in all new GDOS applications. Using a special set of scaling routines, the original Degas could take one font file and display it in six sizes (single/double width and half/single/double height). The normal size of the font was 8 pixels wide and 16 pixels high. With the various scaling options, Degas could produce fonts that were 8X8, 8X16, 8X32, 16X8, 16X16 and 16X32 pixels wide and high. The GEM GDOS font structure is substantially different from that used by Degas. Instead of deriving all text sizes from one font file, GDOS must have a font file for each size desired. In order to get all six Degas font sizes, it is necessary to build six font files for GDOS. But a problem arises here: two of these font files have a height of 8 pixels (also known as "points"), two have heights of 16 pixels and two have heights of 32 pixels. GDOS gets confused because, when it's told to select a character height of 8 pixels, 16 pixels or 32 pixels, it won't know which one to use! This is where the concept of a font "family" comes into play. Each font family is made up of several different font files, each one of which has a different height. The characters in each font file that makes up a family look alike, but are simply different sizes. In addition, each font family must contain a unique identification number, ranging from 1 to 32767, so that GDOS knows which font files are a part of which family. The font families are also assigned a name up to 32 characters long so that you can choose the font from the Degas Elite font menu. The converter. The FONTCONV program is designed to take a single Degas-format font file and create up to six GEM-format font files for use with Degas Elite or other programs that use GDOS. Each font is turned into two font families, one of which is 8 pixels wide, the other of which is 16 pixels wide. The 8-pixel family is termed single-width, and the 16-pixel wide family is double-width. These font families MUST contain a unique font identifier number, otherwise GDOS becomes confused. When run, a file selector dialog appears. Select a Degas-format font file that you want to convert. After the font file is read into memory, another dialog lets you select the sizes you want to use, and assign names and font IDs to the fonts you create. The program creates default values initially, but you can modify them as desired. The font NAME is a 32-character string which appears in the Degas Elite font selection dialog. Be sure the names assigned to the single-width font and the double-width font are different, so you know which you are selecting. The "EXTENDED" suffix is recommended for the double-width font. The face ID number is a number that you enter to differentiate the font from all others (simply move the cursor to the id field). This number MUST BE UNIQUE to this font! We recommend that you keep a small notebook to hold the font numbers you have used and the fonts to which they have been assigned. The importance of unique font identifier numbers cannot be stressed too much, because if you try to use two font families with the same identifier number, one of the fonts won't be available or become intermixed with the other. If you aren't sure of which ID number to use, enter a large value (up to 32767) to avoid accidental duplication. DON'T use ID values below 50, because some existing GEM fonts may use those numbers. Both the single- and double-width fonts allow you to select the various heights that will be used in creating the GEMfont files. Click on the HALF, SINGLE and DOUBLE buttons to select or deselect that height. Turning all the buttons off for a font width prevents that font family from being created. If the original Degas font file had the half-height option disabled, you will not be able to create a half-height version of the font. After setting the two font family settings to the appropriate values, you can set the four-character filename prefix for the GEM fonts. The program automatically sets this, but you can change it as needed. For a font called COMPUTER, the prefix is set to COMP and the files that are written are: Filename Size ------------ ------ COMPHS08.FNT 8X8 COMPSS16.FNT 8X16 COMPDS32.FNT 8X32 COMPHD08.FNT 16X8 COMPSD16.FNT 16X16 COMPDD32.FNT 16X32 The first three font files are the single-width family, the last three are the double-width family. Using the fonts. After you have converted the Degas fonts into the appropriate GEM font files, you simply add the font files to your startup disk and place the names of the fonts you want to use in the ASSIGN.SYS file. CAUTION: Loading fonts requires a substantial amount of memory. If you are using Degas Elite in a 512K system and try to load a large number of fonts, you may run out of memory when the program tries to load the fonts. If this happens, none of the file selector dialogs appear when you try to load pictures, because of lack of memory. Exit the program and remove some of the font filenames from the ASSIGN.SYS file before retrying. Desk accessories can also cause this problem. Use only the desk accessories and fonts you need. Page 69: Appendix D: Showing Your Pictures SHOWPIC2.PRG is an automatic picture display program which continually cycles through all available Degas Elite pictures on a disk. It will display both compressed and non-compressed pictures and blocks. On a color monitor both medium and low resolution pictures can be displayed without having to change resolutions. You cannot display color pictures on a monochrome monitor and vice-versa. However, you can load these pictures into Degas Elite and save them using your preferred resolution and then display them with SHOWPIC2. The initial screen lets you specify whether or not to display pictures, blocks or filenames. Click in the appropriate box to select. Pressing Help at any time allows you to re-select your options. The second screen lets you specify the active drive. All pictures on a disk, either in the root directory or in a folder will be displayed. SHOWPIC2 only finds pictures and blocks one folder deep; if they are in a folder which itself is in a folder, it can't find them. Undo quits the program, space bar pauses and Help lets you change all the options. Refer to the manual for more information on the display time.