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System extras

Mark Wherry reports on recent developments...

We last looked at BubbleGEM and OLGA back in AC#5, since then, coupled with InterActive's English releases, support for both has exploded!

Bigger Bubbles

BubbleGEM has established itself as one the most popular system extras ever with most active programmers adding BubbleGEM support. There was a six month gap between the original English 02 release and release 03 but since then there have been five revisions - BubbleGEM has come a long way, and the so called "dream team" have been busy!

** BGEMCPX.GIF here **

A CPX module has now been added to configure BubbleGEM, although strangely, there's no bubble help! There's now an option to use box-like help bubbles instead of the so called speech bubbles which pleased a friend of mine who disliked the original bubbles. Personally I still prefer the original bubbles but it's always nice to have a choice.

** BGEM1.GIF here **
** BGEM2.GIF here **
 The next significant change is inclusion of the help daemon (or server). This started out as a separate program which could be run alongside BubbleGEM, but has now been integrated into BubbleGEM itself. With the help daemon active bubbles appear automatically as the mouse hovers over objects - just like the Mac/PC platform equivalents. The help daemon can be turned on/off and the delay and display times can all be configured using the CPX module.
Other minor additions include support for the font protocol. Previously BubbleGEM had only proprietary routines for changing fonts, but now any other program that supports the font protocol can be used to select the current font. Also, BubbleGEM can now optionally send out AV_SENDKEY messages. This means if a bubble is displayed and you carry on typing, the first character won't be swallowed by BubbleGEM when the bubble is cancelled.
There's always the danger simple and effective utilities like BubbleGEM will become burdened with unnecessary features, taking up a disproportionate share of system resources but happily Thomas hasn't fallen into this trap - BubbleGEM still occupies less than 35Kb memory.

OLGA

Since we last looked at OLGA there have been two new releases - the current release is v1.5. Strangely, OLGA development has been both major and minor at the same time.

Thomas has completely rewritten the OLGA manager in PureC - which was previously developed using PurePascal. This dramatically decreases the amount of memory needed. I certainly judged the 70Kb memory required by OLGA 1.2 as an excellent investment but even with extra features, v1.5 occupies a mere 30Kb - less than BubbleGEM! The OLGA manager can now also detect if an OLGA application has crashed, and de-register it accordingly.
There's an extra OLGA-Tools program provided which makes altering the current installation quick and easy, currently its main function is to check the OLGA.INF file.
Programmers are provided with some extra calls to help find the paths of servers and recognition of multitasking systems including MultiTOS, N.AES and MagiC has been improved.
The inplace drawing routines (refer to AC#6 for more details) have been rewritten, although the previous routines are still there to maintain compatibility. Provision has also been made for clients and servers using different colour tables simultaneously.
Although there's only a few "new" features in this release OLGA is a seems near-complete for the job it was designed to do. The final remaining hurdle is implementing inplace activation. This will be based on what is to be called GEM Component Object Model (GCOM), based upon the OLE/COM structure of Microsoft's ActiveX and will effectively enable programs to run within programs.
Another element being worked on for future OLGA releases is GDBC (GEM Database Connectivity) which will work with GEMScript to allow databases to be integrated within GEM applications. OLGA's future is exciting - so stay tuned.

Keytab

Keytab is not a new program - it's already at revision 06, but it's one we haven't covered until now. With the popularity of emulators and cross-platform computing you may encounter problems handling different character sets. Each character in a set is usually assigned a number and the problems arise when a character is assigned different values in different character sets. Keytab sets out to eliminate these problems.
Although it can be launched from anywhere, the best place to install Keytab is in the Auto folder after which you can forget it. A cookie is placed into the operating system which provides functions programmers can access when handling import and export operations. As you'd expect Thomas' own Texel makes use of these routines.

Conclusions

Thomas' excellent Natural Born Programmers web page is worth checking regularly to pick up the latest additions and revisions to his utilities which are as important as fully blown applications to the continued well being of the MagiC operating system.

** BC **
http://thmuch.home.pages.de/
** /BC **