SPACE 2/SPACE - Library 2 - Volume 1.iso/utility/455/doc/gemini.doc

Text File | 1990-07-20 | 8KB | 137 lines

Documentation for GEMINI Version 1.1

Copyright (C) 1989 by Gereon Steffens & Stefan Eising

GEMINI is a shareware program by

  Gereon Steffens                     Stefan Eissing
  Elsterweg 8              and        Dorfbauernschaft 7
  D-5000 Köln 90                      D-4419 Laer-Holthausen
  Germany                             Germany
  Mailbox: MAUS Bonn, [phone]  Mailbox: MAUS Münster, [phone]

English version of docs by Ton van Overbeek, [e-mail]

GEMINI is an alternative desktop for all Atari ST computers with at least
one megabyte RAM. To use GEMINI you need to have installed TOS 1.2
("Blitter-TOS") or later: TOS 1.4 ("Rainbow-TOS") or TOS 1.6 (the TOS for
the STe).
The blitter, when available, is supported.
Without a harddisk use is possible, but not vere meaningfull, because for
example the copying of files between two diskettes on a single floppy
drive is not very comfortable.

GEMINI (as the name says already) is not one program, but two. The basic
idea is the following: a mouse controlled user interface is in principle
very nice but in some cases it is easier and faster to use a 'conventional'
interface with a command line interpreter. A completely different fact is
that the ease of use of the original Atari desktop leaves something to be
desired.
Based on these ideas two originally independent programs were developed,
namely MUPFEL, a "classical" shell without mouse and graphic features, and
VENUS as a comfortable and fast(!) graphical interface.

For ST users with TOS 1.0 (the first ROM TOS for the 260/520/1040) these
separate programs are included on the diskette. If you got GEMINI (as ZOO
archive) from a mailbox, then you can get the standalone programs MUPFEL
and VENUS by sending us a diskette with a self addressed envelope and
sufficient international reply coupons.

Something about the naming: MUPFEL comes from Ping, the pinguin in
"Urmel aus dem Eis" (Urmel out of the ice), who always uses Wawa's sleeping
shell and says "I also want a Mupfel!". VENUS came then almost automatically,
inspired by Boticelli's famous picture where the newborn Venus comes to the
beach in a shell. GEMINI (the twins) is the combination of both.
(Hello, here is Stefan Eissing. I'm writing this after Ton has translated
the docs, so he is not responsible for the poor english used in this note.
We expected that the translation of the naming of MUPFEL would be difficult
and some further explanation would be needed. "Urmel aus dem Eis" was a
TV movie with animals who have learned to speak. Wawa had a big shell where
he lived (and slept) in. Ping, the penguin, always envied Wawa and said
"I want a shell, too!". But he had a bad pronounciation and instead of
"shell" he always said "pfell". Well, the german word for shell is "Muschel"
and so he said "Mupfel". Hope you got it now.)

How does it work? In the first place is MUPFEL a shell which provides the
basic functions like deleting, copying and renaming of files, the starting
of programs, etc. All these functions are also used by VENUS in order to
avoid programming these functions twice. This means for example that dragging
a file from one window to another causes VENUS to build a corresponding
command line like 'noalias cp c:\test\otto d:\otto' which is passed to MUPFEL
by the function system() and the systemvariable _shell_p. All MUPFEL commands
used by VENUS are passed to MUPFEL with 'noalias' so that there are no
conflicts with user defined aliases.
VENUS is thus a real shell: it translates the actions of the user into the
sometimes cryptic commands of the underlaying level.

The other two files in this directory (VENUS.DOC and MUPFEL.DOC) deal with the
standalone versions of MUPFEL and VENUS. In this files only the extra features
of the combined version, GEMINI, are described.

There are two menuitems: "Enter Mupfel" under "Extras" and in Extras/Options
the item "Console window". Selecting "Enter Mupfel" opens the console window
in which it is possible to give MUPFEL commands directly.
This window is a normal AES window, in which also TOS programs (programs
that do not use AES or VDI) can run. For this the BIOS character output vectors
for the devices CON (2) and RAWCON (5) are redirected to the internal GEMINI
VT52 emulator.

Selecting of "Console window..." causes a dialogue box to appear, in which
you can set various console window parameters. These parameters are:
the font to be used, the fontsize (in points: 1/72 inch) and the number of
columns and rows of the window. The font is selected by clicking on the left
or right arrow which shows the selected fontname. This font selection is only
possible when at boot time GDOS.PRG or AMCGDOS.PRG are in the AUTO folder.
You can find AMCGDOS.PRG in the AUTO folder of this diskette. Without GDOS,
respectively AMCGDOS, only the (erroneously) so called "6x6 system font" is
available. Only fonts that are NOT proportional can be selected: i.e. fonts
with all characters of equal width. The possible font sizes are dependent on
the selected font. For the system font the sizes 8,9,10,16,18 and 20 are
possible. For the supplied fonts (in the GEMSYS directory) the possible sizes
are 10 and 20 (GEMINI.FNT) and 9 and 18 (TMAIL*.FNT) respectively.
You can select the size of the console window in a wide range. GEMINI puts the
actual size in the so called VDI escape variables. However there are only a few
programs which work with a size different from 80x25.

When GEMINI is started two so called autostart files are executed, if available.
These are MUPFEL.MUP (see example) and GEMINI.MUP. The important difference
between these files is that in MUPFEL.MUP no external programs can be started
and the "cd" command is not allowed. In GEMINI.MUP there may be any command.
You have to set all the environment variables in MUPFEL.MUP because some of
them are already needed at the initialization of VENUS (especially SCRAPDIR
and TRASHDIR).

Installation of GEMINI.

In order to run GEMINI without problems the following files need to be in the
same directory: GEMINI.PRG, GEMINI.RSC, GEMINIIC.RSC, GEMINI.INF, MUPFEL.MUP
and EXIT.PRG (These files are in the GEMINI directory on the diskette, or in
the ZOO archive (in case you did not extract GEMINI with "zoo x//" you should
repeat it with this comand)).
Moreover you need to copy the program SHELL0.PRG to the AUTO folder of your
boot drive, so that an errorfree functioning of GEMINI is guaranteed after
a warm boot. SHELL0.PRG clears the system variable _shell_p which is normally
not cleared at a warm boot.

Hard disk users can copy the GEMINI directory to any place in one of their
filesystems.
If you have GDOS already installed, then you should copy all the files from
the GEMSYS directory into your font directory. In case you don't use GDOS,
installation is easy:
a) Copy AMCGDOS.PRG to your AUTO folder.
b) Copy the directory GEMSYS and the file ASSIGN.SYS to the root directory
   where your AUTO folder is.
c) Edit the path in ASSIGN.SYS accordingly.

Users with only one floppy drive should copy the AUTO, GEMSYS and GEMINI
folders to a diskette and boot the computer with it.

You can put the DOC and SAMPLES directories where you want.
We kindly ask you to read through the documentation in the DOC folder so you
can use GEMINI in an efficient way, otherwise you might miss some usefull
feature or spend a lot of time on non existant problems.

We wish you a lot of fun.

        Gereon Steffens  &  Stefan Eissing