The Atari Compendium/The Atari Compendium (Toad Computers) (1994).iso/files/umich/utils/mouse/silkmous.lzh/SILKMOUS.ASC

Text File | 1993-09-22 | 12KB | 243 lines

    Doc file for SilkMouse 3.2
    Copyright (c) 1993 Mark Slagell
    609 Church Street, St. Johns, MI  48879


    SilkMouse 3.2 at a glance:
    ==========================

  ... has a uniquely smooth, fast, well-behaved mouse accelerator
  ... has a screen saver that won't intrude on your work
  ... compensates for a hardware bug in Atari keyboards
  ... allows you to freeze the screen after applications when needed
  ... installs from a small program in the AUTO folder
  ... can be customized from the desktop or the accessory menu
  ... runs on any Atari ST, STe, TT or Falcon030 computer.


    How to install SilkMouse
    ========================

 If you are currently using a mouse accelerator or screen saver, remove
 or disable it.  Copy SILKMOUS.PRG to your AUTO folder.

 Optionally, you can also install the SMC utility.  It is supplied here
 in two forms, accessory and CPX module.  The accessory can be renamed
 with a .PRG extender and run from the desktop if desired.  SMC allows
 you to enable or disable each feature of SilkMouse, and to generally
 tweak the whole thing to your taste.  But its use is not essential.

 Reboot, and SilkMouse will install.


    Mouse accelerator feature
    =========================

 SilkMouse "accelerates" the mouse in a radically different fashion from
 its competitors.  The design objective was never acceleration as such,
 but resolution-independence, i.e., uniformity of response in all
 resolutions.  To achieve this, SilkMouse establishes a distance-to-
 distance relationship between mouse movement and pointer movement,
 whereas you are used to (and, I assure you, subliminally frustrated by)
 a distance-to-pixels relationship.  Acceleration is a natural by-
 product.

 Also, the Alt-arrow keys get along better with SilkMouse than with
 other accelerators.

 It's important to take some time to get used to the feel of SilkMouse.
 At first it may seem too fast, even if you are used to another
 accelerator; this only means you are working too hard.  Because
 SilkMouse is not inherently jerky, and because it does not distort the
 mouse pointer's angle of motion as other accelerators do, you will
 quickly learn the correct gentle motions to reliably get the pointer
 where you want it without backtracking.

 What, you never noticed your old mouse accelerator distorting the angle
 of mouse motion?  Using almost any other accelerator, try moving the
 mouse diagonally at a moderate speed, or in rapid circles; you'll see.
 The traditional acceleration method discourages diagonal motion by
 sharply bending the pointer trajectory parallel to one axis or the
 other.  Among true mouse accelerators (as opposed to doublers), only
 SilkMouse is entirely free from that effect.


    Screen saver feature
    ====================

 SilkMouse's screen saver is not meant to entertain you, or to frustrate
 you, but to extend the useful life of your monitor without unexpectedly
 blanking the display while you're looking at it.

 The screen saver is effective in all screen modes on the ST/STe/TT, and
 in all but the "true color" modes on the Falcon030.

 When a predefined time has elapsed with no input from mouse or keyboard
 (or, optionally, modem), the display inverts and goes to half
 intensity.  For example, black text on a white background becomes gray
 text on a black background.  The screen remains in this state for an
 interval that is some multiple of the original delay, then goes black.
 At any time, bumping the mouse or pressing any key restores the
 original display.

 The invert/dim algorithm is really the best for your monitor, as it
 assures even use of all areas of the screen and prevents burn-in.  It's
 best for your convenience too; even after protection begins,
 information on the screen remains visible for some time.

 When a monochrome monitor is attached, a screenful of memory is
 reserved during bootup.  This allows the screen saver to mimic its
 color behavior even though the hardware does not support much palette
 manipulation.  When changing states from normal to dimmed, the screen
 is either simply inverted (if the background was white), or dimmed by
 masking every other pixel (if the background was black).  In the former
 case, all screen activity remains continuously viewable.  In the
 latter, the display is updated every five seconds.  In both cases the
 display blanks completely after a while.  You may disable this feature
 when you save defaults; this saves some memory, but makes the saver
 unable to blank or dim the mono screen.  In that case it simply inverts
 periodically, as it did in earlier versions.


    Function key guard feature
    ==========================

 All Atari computers manufactured to date (at least, the ones I've used)
 have a problem in the keyboard.  It happens when a shift key is held
 down and two other adjacent keys are pressed at about the same time.
 The keyboard will in that case sometimes erroneously report a shift-F1
 or shift-F3, in addition to one or both of the keys actually pressed.
 If you've never noticed, it's because you are an exceptionally careful
 typist, or because none of your programs does anything interesting when
 you press shift-F1 or shift-F3 anyway.  But it is a problem for a
 number of people.  The keyguard feature effectively cures the glitch.

 This feature must be turned on with the SMC utility in order to work;
 it is off by default because of possible conflicts with key-macro
 utilities.  Such conflicts can also often be resolved by changing the
 order in which your AUTO programs run.


    Hold-screen option
    ==================

 The main use of this feature is for reading the screen output of a
 program run from the desktop, when that program was designed to run
 from a command line shell.

 You know the feeling.  You run an unfamiliar program, it prints a
 screen full of something which immediately disappears, and you're back
 at the desktop.  You wonder if there's a command line option you can
 send to make the program wait for a keypress before exiting, but of
 course that's part of the information you're not fast enough to read!
 So you run it over and over, vainly trying to freeze the screen by
 hitting control-S or alt-Help at just the right millisecond.  (Am I the
 only one who's done this dance?)

 If the hold-screen option of SilkMouse is enabled, each application
 checks the status of the right mouse button when terminating.  If it is
 not being pressed, the application exits normally; otherwise the screen
 remains visible in whatever state the application left it, until you
 release the button.  You can also lock the screen and free your hands
 to take notes or whatever, by clicking the left button while holding
 the right one down.  Then you can release both buttons, and the system
 will remain frozen until you click again with the right button.

 Like the function key guard, this feature must be turned on with the
 SMC utility to work.  Also, it is effective only after all AUTO
 programs have run and all accessories have loaded.


    More about the SMC utility
    ==========================

 You may customize and control SilkMouse in any of the following three
 ways, depending on your needs:

 1: Use SMC.CPX with Atari's extended control panel, or
 2: Install SMC.ACC as an accessory, or
 3: Rename SMC.ACC to SMC.PRG and run it from the desktop.

 Since the acceleration method used by SilkMouse is fairly non-
 intuitive, its configuration options need some explaining.  There is no
 table of distances to fill in, and no simple slow/fast adjustment.  It
 may help your understanding somewhat to think of a three-speed
 transmission designed to run in the middle gear most of the time.
 SilkMouse can differentiate between much lower physical mouse speeds
 than any other accelerator; that capability makes for almost
 imperceptibly smooth shifts, higher overall acceleration, and better
 control.  What can be adjusted under this scheme are the physical