The Rainbow Vol. 09 No. 01 - August 1989 - TRS-80 Color ...

memory.
Wh at's the nex t step in the evolution of
Multi-Mentt? ·'Multi Tnnls. which lets yo u
create buttons and scroll bars," Alphonso
sa id . "''ll probably add thi s capability to
Multi-Menu. but I may release it as a separate
package you can integrate with Multi­
Menu.
" If I make it a se parate package, I'll
inclu de all the things needed to build a
completely mouse-driven inte1face,'' he said,
" including automatic dialog boxes and an
automatic method to open and read or write
to a file selec ted from a I ist of files presented
in a dialog box simi Jar to the Macintosh
standard file dialog."
Alphonso believes there 's a speed problem
with Multi-Vue. noting that the time
required to update the mouse pointer drags
clown the system a bit. But he had n' t seen
the new GShell+ module. whi ch was enhanced
by the OS-9 Users Group.
What else does Alpha Software se ll ?
"Le,·el II T nnls is a group of programs
that does a number of things I' ve always
needed to clo." Alph onso said. " It gives yo u
wild card commands to efficientl y move
files around . There's a set of tree di spl ay
commands that give yo u a visual ass ist
when yo u are tryin g to find a file. You can
li st an entire directory and actuall y break
out any fi le. "
The OS-9 Lerel/1 BBS Release 3 .0 is
Alphonso's most popular program. "We
have more than I 00 people using it,'' he
sa id . Ou r users are spread throughout the
country and Canada. We're busy now setting
up a support group fo rthe board. Mike
Camera will take charge of the new service.
Not all of hi s customers. are usin g it to
run a pub lic bulletin board. A few are using
it as a pri vate E-Mail system. Some even
use it as a menu to run their own OS-9
app lications.
"Most people reall y li ke it. '' Alphonso
sa id. "Especiall y the people who prefer
OS-9. I' ve had a few people who don ' t
know a lot about OS-9 a1icl have had troubl e
running it. Others said it forced them to run
OS-9."
Did he have to overcome any techni ca l
problems whil e writing it?
''We II . there was the carrier-detec t problem,''
he said. "The AC I APAK driver has thi s
capability built in. but it doesn't always
wo rk quite right."
Alphonso wrote a routine th at ki ll s any
process started by the parent if carri er detect
is lost. It also took him a whil e to solve
the baud-rate detection problem. The program
now se ts itse lf up fo r 1200-baud
operation and wa its for a use r to press the
ENTER key. Depending on what OS-9 returns.
it sw itches the speed up or down.
Alp honso was able to te ll which direc-
124 THE RAINBOW August 1989
ti on to sw itch the speed to because one
speed ret urn s an arrow, the other returns a
junk charac ter. He checks thi s character,
then resets and goes. If nothin g happens in
four seconds. he resets and goes back to
1200 baud.
A pub I ic doma in version of Gala tic
Cnnflict . a game first published in THE
RAINBOW in November, 1986, is now
bundl ed with BBS Release 3 .0. It was translated
to BAS IC09 by John Sebella and Melvin
Gaskins of Hobart, Indi ana.
Hyper-Tech - Another Rising Star
Keith Alphonso wasn't th e on ly yo ung
man at RAINBOWfest, Chicago determined
to capture a piece of the pie crea ted by OS -
9's increased popularity.
We were also pleased to meet and interview
Eri c Cri chl ow ( HYPERTE on DEL­
PHI) and hi s fri end Chester Simpson. Eri c,
17 and Chester, 19, teamed up with Mike
Haa land to form Hyper-Tech in June of
1988. Together, the trio plans to introd uce
several exc iting new OS-9 products in the
near future.
C ri chl ow's labo r of love is Shel/mate, a
$25 program that em ul ates the popular
hands-free fil e management techniques of
the Mac intosh and Ami ga on an OS-9 stage.
It's used to copy, delete, move and rename
f iles. It can also li st files. print them or
di splay pictures from them - even arc and
de-arc them.
"Shel/mate lets yo u perform essentially
every operation you could ever want."
Crichl ow sa id. " It's especiall y handy when
you need to move a large number of files
and want to do it with ve ry few keystrokes
or mouse moves. When I' m through I hope
Shel/mate will have everything Multi-Vue
has built into it-and much more. Besides,
it's my fi rst C program . .. ev,e rythin g I
learn will go into constant upd ates of the
program.
So how did Hyper-Tech get started?
"We felt the Color Computer 3 offered
an amazin g amount of potenti al no one was
explorin g under RS-DOS or OS-9,''
Cri chl ow sa id. "We fe lt the on ly way to do
anything to help the CoCo reach its potential
was to write some programs ou rselves."
By thi s tim e, Chester was already proficient
with assembl y language programming
under RS-DOS. Mike and Eri c were
starting to learn C. Cheste1· was already
workin g on graphi cs and animation programs
under RS-DOS.
Chester began to design a graphi cs and
animat ion development system. Mike
started talking to di stri butors and learn ed
there was a big demand for easy an imation
programs. Chester's passion became a major
projec t.
Chester's OS-9 product is so youn g it
doesn't even have a name. An RS -DOS
version already on the market is ca lled
Jnwgemaster. JmagemastN runs on a 128K
system and ed its 64-by-64 pi xel graph ics
images th at can be used to create grap hi cs
images fo r autom ati on sequences.
Eri c and Mike wa nt to do many thin gs .
"Tandy and Microware gave us much power
and opportunity in the OS-9 Level I I windowing
system. Hard ly anyone has clone
anything with it," Crichl ow said. "We wa nt
to do things with Multi-Vue win dows that
most people think are impossible.''
For example?
"Graphics! Me nu s' A clipboard standard,"
Cri chl ow sa id. I' m also attempting
to set up windows yo u can move and resize.
I fi gure it can do it th e same way Multi- Vue
does. If you cli ck on the menu ba r, but not
on a se lec ti on. it will know yo u are ask ing
to move the window."
How will he do it?
'Til dei ni z the window and give yo u a
box the same size as your original window .
Then. after yo u move the box and res ize it.
I' II read the parameters of the box aga in and
open a window the size yo u want at the
locati on yo u req ues t. In th e meantime, I
will have saved a buffer wit h all the data
that was in your wi nd ow ori ginall y. After I
crea te the new window. I'll write it back
out aga in.
MVCanvas Promises Speed a nd Ease
MVCam·as is another Hyper-Tech product
that lurks on the immediate horizon. In
fact. it may be available by the time you
read thi s column.
" We plan fo r MVCanms to be j ust as
fun cti onal as any RS-DOS pai nt program
- bar none," Simpson said. " It will also be
just as quick. You' ll be able to access a popup
menu th at hold s all of the draw in g tools
from the menu bar at the top of your sc reen.
Thi s means you' ll have th e entire screen
free fo r yo ur arti sti c masterpiece," he sa id.
"MVCc/17\ 'C/S is an intelligent program.''
Mike grabs a piece of the screen and
holds it in a buffer, then uses a Mulli-Vue
ca ll to make the buffer hi s pointer. Thi s lets
Multi- Vue handle moving the image around
the sc reen.
MVCanms also supports large fonts.
While Mike works on the program , Chester
is creatin g the new fonts- rang in g from 8by-8
to 24-by-32 pixels using lmagemaker.
It was th e impress ive speed of MVCan­
,·as that prodded Chester to make the move
to OS-9. To him , speed is everything.
Simpson is presentl y workin g on a graphics
program that can transport im ages back
and forth between RS-DOS an d OS-9 programs.
He hopes to be ab le to save an image
to the OS-9 clip board. transfer it to an RS­
DOS disk and then load it into lmagemaker