========================================================================= (C) 1993 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information. ========================================================================== ************ Topic 35 Sun Nov 01, 1992 J.LUCIEN1 at 14:06 EST Sub: SPEEDO GDOS!!! A place to discuss the wonders of SPEEDO GDOS, the newest graphics subsystem enhancement for TOS from ATARI Corp. 204 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 1 Sun Nov 01, 1992 J.LUCIEN1 at 14:07 EST I would like to ask any ATARI official to please explain the advantages of Speedo GDOS versus FSM and Font GDOS. Also (if possible), price, projected release date, system requirements, etc. Thanks... ------Wilton ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 2 Mon Nov 02, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 14:27 EDT SpeedoGDOS will use less memory than FSMGDOS and will be faster too. The fonts are widely available and are relatively cheap. As for FontGDOS.. SpeedoGDOS has scalable fonts. FontGDOS uses bitmapped GDOS fonts only. The output of SpeedoGDOS will be WAY better than FontGDOS. SpeedoGDOS will work on any ST, STE, Mega STE, Falcon030, Mega, TT, etc. I wish I could give you a definite RAM requirement, but I can't. I believe that SpeedoGDOS could potentially run in as little as 512K (depending on what applications and printers you are using..) As for date of delivery and price.. Sorry, I don't have that information as of yet. As soon as I have something, I will post it here! -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 3 Tue Nov 03, 1992 F.BELL1 [Frank @ Home] at 00:22 EST Wilton, You sure have been asking some hard quesions lately. Sorry to say you and the rest of us will have to wait a while for answers. :-( Frank... ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 7 Sun Nov 08, 1992 S.DANUSER [Soul Manager] at 23:15 EST Yes, but does Speedo GDOS have RCA plugs or a 1/8" mini? Does it have a detachable keyboard? Is its processor slot 16 or 32 bit? Will it start easily on cold winter mornings? "Oh, was I raving?" Soul Manager ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 9 Tue Nov 10, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 18:31 EDT SpeedoGDOS hasn't actually been released as of yet. I think it will be shown at COMDEX, but I am not sure. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. PS. Please hang in there.. We are squashing the last few bugs and it shouldn't be too much longer before we are ready to release it. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 10 Tue Nov 10, 1992 R.WILSON36 [Bob Wilson] at 19:19 EST John, FSM had problems with some perfectly rational GDOS programs. Is SPEEDO better on that score? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 11 Wed Nov 11, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 01:44 EDT Bob, we have been doing alot of testing with GDOS programs. If you know of programs that have had problems with FSMGDOS, please let me know.. I am sure that the people working on SpeedoGDOS would like to make sure that all of their bases are covered. One comment though: There are older versions of software which had some problems with FSM that have been fixed. For example, Timeworks Desktop Publisher had problems and has been fixed/upgraded. Looking forward to your thoughts... -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 12 Wed Nov 11, 1992 F-D-PERCIVAL [Fred P.] at 07:21 EST John, I've got the original Goldstar release of FSM. I mostly run it on a TOS 2.05 MSTE with 4 megs, although everything works similarly on a TOS 1.04 1040 with 2.5 Megs. WordUp does function with FSM, but very sluggishly. I can't use any bit fonts in the ASSIGN.SYS file, or else the scaled fonts are not available. Font selection within the program takes over 30 seconds per change. But output with the DJ print driver is very good. Please don't forget the formfeeds in Speedo's DJ driver! I recently bought K-Spread4. This works grudgingly with FSM. K-Spread cannot use the bit fonts, even if I boot with my bit-font-only ASSIGN.SYS file. Only the scaled fonts are used. The real problem is that if I get the FSM font caches much above 200K, K-Spread gives 3 bombs when starting up. This small cache size really cramps the font software, and I now get a lot of 'out of memory' errors from FSM. Again, the output is real snazzy if everything works. Those are the two programs I mostly use with FSM. I haven't tried to do too much with text in my paint programs. I am definitely looking forward to a clean solution to my current messy setup of multiple boot configurations depending on font requirements! ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 13 Wed Nov 11, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:50 EST Towns, You _know_ we can't wait! More speed! More speed! Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 14 Wed Nov 11, 1992 R.WILSON36 [Bob Wilson] at 22:01 EST John, I do not have a copy of FSM since it has not been released. I don't need yet another WP. Pagestream is fine for me. However I have been told by several users of B/STAT that the program crashes after printing a page using FSM. The only thing that the code does after the update workstation call is to do an unload printer fonts and reload screen fonts. It is written however in compiled GFA. This is with a system setup which works with WFII and FSM. As mentioned in previous messages (by others) there have been other reported problems. B/STAT has no such problems with FONT GDOS. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 15 Thu Nov 12, 1992 S.DANUSER [Soul Manager] at 04:53 EST I too use FSM GDOS, but only with Wordflair II, with which it was supplied. I found it to be a giant leap over old GDOS, particularly the way you can configure it with the accessory or CPX. Note that there was a newer version of FSM released with the WF 1.5 upgrade, but as I haven't sent in for it (yet), I can't comment on any increased compatability or bug fixes. I just hope we get Speedo GDOS soon and everybody supports it and we have a solid standard and everyone is happy. Whew. Soul Manager Category 14, Topic 35 Message 17 Mon Nov 16, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 15:01 EDT I understand that there is a new version of KSpread that should be available soon. As for WordUp, that program hasn't been supported by its authors for several years and you are right: It doesn't work with FSM. At one time, Atari purchased the rights to the _source code_ to WordUp with the intentions of releasing it at some point under another name. That hasn't happened to date and I doubt that it ever will. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 18 Mon Nov 16, 1992 P.GRIFFITH2 [PGRIF] at 22:35 EST >Atari-ST RoundTable >Category 14, Topic 35 >Message 17 Mon Nov 16, 1992 >TOWNS [John@Atari] at 15:01 EDT > > At one time, Atari purchased the rights to the _source code_ to > WordUp with the intentions of releasing it at some point under > another name. That hasn't happened to date and I doubt that it ever > will. > > > -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. Well, now that I have some "official" confirmation that Wordup won't be upgraded(so that it will actually WORK as advertised), I can reformat my v3.0 disks and put something useful on them. Having spent about $140 on this piece of *~%#% and never having been able to get ONE single thing typed in and successfully printed, I definitely feel ripped off. I was hoping that Atari was going to make my investment in time and money worthwhile. What a joke! Sorry for the off-topic drift, so, I'll believe that Speedo exists when I can buy it at my local dealer, until then I consider it mythical. Paul ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 19 Mon Nov 16, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 23:59 EST P.GRIFFITH2: I am sorry that your 140 dollar investment was wasted on WordUp. I wish something different was going to come of it, but alas I am afraid that WordUp is probably dead at this point. But, remember.. Atari didn't get one red cent of your money. All we did was purchase the source code from a company that was about to go under and attempt to save a product from going down with it. Unfortunately, the source code was in about the same state as the company. The good news is that Atari will have a program called ST !%1 Works which will have a good word processor, spreadsheet, and database in one program! All of those will be SpeedoGDOS, FSMGDOS, and FontGDOS compatible. I think this program will be what alot of people have been looking for. Look for ST Works sometime after the first of the year. (I will provide more information as I receive it!) -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 20 Tue Nov 17, 1992 T.GIRSCH [T.J.] at 00:56 EST Towns - Could it be true?!? A _complete_ productivity package for the ST? Will it be packaged with Falcons??? Can't be, that would be a smart move! ;^) - T.J. @ Atari Advantage ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 21 Tue Nov 17, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff - ST'er] at 01:10 EST And Word-Up would have been such a great word-processor if they fixed some of the annoying bugs and problems with it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ JSW ^^^^ ^^^^ ST'er ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Monday, November 16, 1992 - 11:56:06 pm ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 22 Tue Nov 17, 1992 GSCOTT-MOORE [Gerry] at 03:05 EST \\\--- Will the newest version of GDos (SpeedoDos) be available before PR for the next unavailable one takes precedence? \\\--- Gerry ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 23 Tue Nov 17, 1992 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 05:11 EST John, Why don't Atari sell the source code to WordUp to someone that will upgrade it and fix it? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 24 Tue Nov 17, 1992 G.ANDERSON at 05:45 EST Paul, I'm sorry to hear that you've never been able to get WordUp to work for you. At this point it is still my favorite WP program and I do a LOT of official and personal work with it. I run a Mega4ST/SLM system by the way. I was VERY sad to hear that Neocept finally had to close to doors, but it was NOT due to a poor product. NonDisclosure Agreements and simple courtesy prevent me from giving all the information at my disposal, but there was a lot more involved than most folks know about. Only now, with programs such as Calligrapher, are programs coming out that even come close to matching WordUp's performance and flexibility. I'd love to see Atari release a finished version of WordUp, but, as John mentioned, that doesn't seem very likely. Gregg ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 25 Tue Nov 17, 1992 D.A.BRUMLEVE [kidprgs] at 09:04 EST At the conference last night, Sam Tramiel said that ST Sutra (the MSWorks- like multi-program nearing release) is being renamed "Concierge". Personally, I think that's a mistake. Only a handful of us (out of over 50) seemed to know what a concierge is, let alone to be able to pronounce it. Sutra -- well, nobody knows what that is, maybe, but at least everyone knows how to say it. Anyway, I'm looking forward to using the program by whatever name. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 26 Tue Nov 17, 1992 CHAZ at 09:28 EST I think "Concierge" is a great name - but I'm in the luxury hotel biz and am familiar with the term. Seems clever to me. BTW it roughly translates to "keeper of the keys". ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 28 Tue Nov 17, 1992 F.BELL1 [Frank @ Home] at 16:59 EST Concierge: doorkeeper, gatekeeper, sentinel, protector, janitor. Don't you just love thesaurus? Still, whatever its name is, its just what I'm looking for. Thanks for the information John. I can't wait, I want it now. Frank... ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 29 Tue Nov 17, 1992 T.EVANS21 [] at 18:23 EST >Message 17 Mon Nov 16, 1992 >TOWNS [John@Atari] at 15:01 EDT > >As for WordUp, that program hasn't been supported by its authors >for several years and you are right: It doesn't work with FSM. <<>> John, & PGRIF: That's strange.. I know about a dozen people right here on GEnie that use WordUp every day, with FSM-GDOS, and HP DeskJets, and love it.. I have seen the printed results and they are totally awesome!! It seems to work just fine for them, and some of them use a hundred or so fonts... I just wish I had FSM to use with my version of WordUp and my DeskJet and get the output they do! I am happy with my limited set up, but it could be much better as I have seen, with FSMGDOS... --------------------------- PGRIF: Strange, I use WordUp every day!! G+plus, Mega4 STe, and a DeskJet 500.. And there are hundreds, no probably thousands more, that still use this fine program.. (It does take some time & effort to get it up and configured properly).. Most of them, that I have talked to here on GEnie just love the program, and would rather fight than switch!! I know would... I have yet to find another WP that would make me give up WU, and I have looked.... It's far from perfect, but for $60, is what I paid, you can't beat it.. Since it only listed for $75.. How did you get to pay double for it?? Your argument is with whom ever sold it to you at that high price, in the first place.. Why don't you pop over to the WordUp topic, and see if you can get some help to make it work for you?? I'm not a techie, and probably can't offer you much, but there are some real knowledgeable & just plain good guys, over there who I'm sure would be willing, to take the time to help get you up and running.. I do know one thing for sure, and that is, WU requires a lot of free memory in order to print!! I need at least 1.6 meg of memory to print a single page document!! ( I said it wasn't perfect).. You will need even more, if you're using graphics... Don't give up on it, get it working.. It's a great program... Regards, <-:}Ted{:-> Tuesday, November 17, 1992 - 9:27:10 am P.S. I look forward to ST Works & SpeedGDOS.. Sounds good.... Thanks for the info... Wayne Watson.. I've often wondered the same thing... ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 30 Tue Nov 17, 1992 J.P.C. at 20:15 EST D.A.: Very good post. Word Perfect, Microsoft Works, Pagemaker, etc, etc, are self-explanatory. Can you believe that when it finally appears that the ST line is about to get a multi-program application, we are taking issue with its' name? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 31 Tue Nov 17, 1992 FIFTHCRUSADE at 20:22 EST Wayne Watson, >Why don't Atari sell the source code to WordUp to someone that will >upgrade it and fix it? Speaking as a programmer, if the source code is in as bad a shape as Towns indicates, it would probably be easier (or not much harder) to rewrite WordUp from the ground up. And for what? Upgrade fees? I don't think anyone would buy it (the source code). Maybe Atari could upload the source code instead. :-) ----- Frank, >doorkeeper, gatekeeper, sentinel, protector, ... ^^^^^^^^ Sentinel would be an _excellent_ name. ----- Towns, ST Works (or whatever it's called) sounds good, but (and this isn't a flame*) shouldn't Atari stop announcing new products and actually produce a few? Whatever you do, don't give a definite timetable for this product's release. * I know you have little or no control over when products at Atari ship Ben White 5th Crusade Software ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 32 Tue Nov 17, 1992 SFRT-ASST [Kenne@SFRT] at 20:50 EST I just hope they bundle it or offer it at a reduced price with new machines. I hope they offer a discount to old users too. It would be another step closer to a standard and portability between machines and programs. Now if it ports things across platforms they've got a real winner. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 33 Tue Nov 17, 1992 P.GRIFFITH2 [PGRIF] at 22:04 EST Ted E., I'm very glad that everyone you know has Wordup working so wonderfully. I have installed it dozens of times, on Mega 2's, Mega 4's 1040 st's and even an odd STe thrown in. It has never worked correctly. I have spent lots of money downloading patches, sending disks No. 1+5, or 2+3 or whatever Neocept said should be sent back. I bought a used Wordup 3.0 for $50 so that I could still attempt to upgrade(after never receiving two of my disks back from them after sending them in for upgrading and getting no response from letters or phone calls). They did show up almost a year after I sent them in (with a virus.) These upgrade all cost money, one of them was $30. Imagine how thrilled I was, when, after composing a two page response to a newspaper editorial and saving it and then waiting for about twenty minutes to print it, this is what happens. end of letter blah,blah. Yo urs truly, Pa ul Grif fith If I even got this far without a crash. This definitely made my day. I read the manuals, I talked to two Atari dealers, I wanted this program to work as well as even First Word did. Enough. My argument is with the bozos who wrote it and did little or nothing to support it once they got my money. I had the Wordup topic marked for about a year and saw about 20 messages in it in that time. I asked questions and never got replies. In fact, I just checked and I still have it marked, haven't seen any activity there in quite a while. Paul ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 34 Tue Nov 17, 1992 VANDENHEUVEL at 22:31 EST Please don't kill me topic police! John, have you seen Papyrus from Germany (there's a demo here on GEnie I believe)? That's a program Atari should license and make sure Speedo GDOS works on. I'm using the demo now but if I could get an English version I'd buy it in a sec (I faxed the company but no reply yet..) --Dirk-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 36 Wed Nov 18, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 00:46 EDT I perdict that everyone will be pretty happy with this GDOS. The fonts are readily available and reasonably priced. The speed issues have been addressed and SpeedoGDOS is pretty darn speedy. Not to mention the use of the CPX modules to make GDOS much easier to manage. And.. with the SpeedoGDOS.. you don't have to have 200K of Font Caches like you did under FSM. You can get away with as little as 30K! Pretty amazing. -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 37 Wed Nov 18, 1992 S.JOHNSON10 [Steve] at 01:16 EST TOWNS - Isn't Mike Fulton going to get on your ass about that "the [WordUp] source code was in about the same state as the company" remark? And isn't "ST !%1 Works" a funny name for a software package? Seriously, though, does ST Works include a terminal program? J.WISNIEWSK2 - Yes, I was REALLY hoping for a WordUp 3.0 that worked. If it just worked as advertised and were 'cleaned up' a bit, it would've been absolutely fantastic. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 38 Wed Nov 18, 1992 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 03:46 EST Papyrus works fine with FSM and Speedo. The dutch distributor showed me the product in combination with FSM and that was really nice. In fact Papyrus needs FSM/Speedo to be nice. Wilfred ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 39 Wed Nov 18, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 08:01 EST Paul, The WordUp developer, Neocept, went out of business. (I have 3.0, too, but I got it as a beta tester. Spent some $$$ on the phone to discuss problems with them. [Please give my greetings to Mike Fulton, John.]) I'm not sure Atari is obligated to fix software from developers that go under. I appreciate and share your disappointment. WUP was close to being an excellent product. I used and liked it, and miss many of its features. Calligrapher is the program that I use for the stuff I used to use WUP for. (WordFlair II is nice for small documents.) John, "ST !%1 Works"? Looks like a cussword to me! Sounds great, though. Concierge sounds fine. People will learn the new word quickly when they hear what the program does. The more I hear about SpeedoGDOS, the more excited I am. Now we have memory saving. Hope it comes out soon. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 40 Wed Nov 18, 1992 J.WISNIEWSK2 [Jeff - ST'er] at 18:25 EST >I perdict that everyone will be pretty happy with this GDOS. The > fonts are readily available and reasonably priced. The speed issues > have been addressed and SpeedoGDOS is pretty darn speedy. Not to > mention the use of the CPX modules to make GDOS much easier to manage. Gee, for what program have we heard that before. I will believe it when it is installed on my system. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ JSW ^^^^ ^^^^ ST'er ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Wednesday, November 18, 1992 - 9:53:02 am ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 41 Wed Nov 18, 1992 EXPLORER.5 [Bob] at 23:07 EST I just want to make sure that I haven't missed something important here: FSMGDOS was never released except with the Wordflair package, correct? John, is there any chance that you'll identify these "commonly available and reasonably priced" fonts? |) | |)O|) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 42 Thu Nov 19, 1992 S.DANUSER [Soul Manager] at 00:01 EST Wilfred - Do you have a price for Papyrus in approximate US dollars? While I have yet to download the demo, from what I've heard it is a powerful product. Anyone ever see a US distributor sell it? I think it is a sad comment on the state of Atari software that people still swear up and down about the virtues of WordUp 3.0. Sure it had potential (I bought it and used it for a while), but it has tons of bugs and WYSIWYG problems. Would a product like this survive on another platform for even five minutes? No way. Yet there are a good number of Atari owners who use this flawed product. Spend the $150-200 and buy a word processor that works, like Calligrapher or That's Write 2. If we increase the software standard, better more good software will follow. I hope the Atari package at least works as advertised. I'd rather see a product that didn't have all the features in the world, but was free of bugs. Atari needs to take this very seriously. Now let's get Concierge out the door and Speedo GDOS along with it (not to mention the Falcon...)! Soul Manager ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 43 Thu Nov 19, 1992 R.NOAK at 01:41 EST EXPLORER.5, Speedo uses Bitstream Speedo fonts available at Egghead, Walden, etc.. For example, Bitstream's Facelift for Windows, includes Speedo (use these with Atari's Speedo), PS Type 1's(use these with Pagestream), and True Type (use these in Windows if you're a masochist) versions of the same fonts. I think it goes for about $70-80 (street). For that you get about 11-13 fonts. One Sans Serif (in the usual weights),a Serif font (usual weights) and some headline fonts. Bitstream also has various other "Font Packs" available too. Oh, BTW, before anyone asks: YES the Windows versions work just fine with Speedo. All you have to do is install 'em! This is a _major_ jump in quality and compatibility for those of us that use Atari's. Also, BTW, Speedo fonts are "hinted" for top output from low-res devices. Soul Manager, I think you'll be happy with Concierge too! Randy @ Southlake, Inc. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 44 Thu Nov 19, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 02:14 EDT FSMGDOS was only released with WordFlair II. I think (maybe) a few copies were released by Atari directly, but the total number is in the hundreds or so (from what I am told). As for the fonts.. sure! They are BitStream Speedo Fonts. You can buy the font packs at places like EggHead Software, Software, Etc. and other software retailers. The prices are pretty good and the quality is excellent. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 45 Thu Nov 19, 1992 S.JOHNSON10 [Steve] at 02:18 EST SFRT-ASST - From what I've heard, it WILL be bundled with new machines (or at least the Falcon's) early next year, but I haven't heard that as being definite from Atari. P.GRIFFITH2 - You're not the ONLY one who's gone through hell with WordUp. I (and COUNTLESS others) have had the same problems with it crashing, not printing correctly, and so on. It DOES work better on 2.5MB and 4MB machines and in mono than in color, but it's still VERY temperamental. I feel ripped off as well, although I only ended up losing about $25 on it. If anyone DOES still use it, it's a good idea to save your work every few sentences. I, for one, will think twice about buying anything with Shelby Moore's name associated with it just because of my hellish experiences with WordUp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 46 Thu Nov 19, 1992 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 09:05 EST Soul Manager - I think Papurus sells for DM 269,- in Germany, that is approx. $175,- - Wilfred - ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 47 Thu Nov 19, 1992 F.BELL1 [Frank @ Home] at 14:03 EST Soul Manager, Papyrus runs for around DM 300.00 or about $180.00. Frank... ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 48 Thu Nov 19, 1992 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 18:48 EST Bob, If Speedo GDOS uses BitStream Speedo fonts, Towns doesn't need to list them. They can be bought from hundreds of sources, and any good DT publishing book should have references to them. Steve, The problem with Word Up (two words, I think) is that it is unfinished. Shelby did a great job, but it just needs to be debugged. I'd love to see that happen. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 49 Thu Nov 19, 1992 A.MASON4 [Anna] at 21:55 EST Jeff, I agree with you and your assessment of WordUp. I think it was a word processor ahead of its time and with a few bug fixes, it could have ranked up there with the 'big boys'....it's too bad that Atari didn't see fit to continue with development. Anna @ Atari Advantage ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 50 Fri Nov 20, 1992 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 00:48 EST Steve, >P.GRIFFITH2 - You're not the ONLY one who's gone through hell with WordUp. I >(and COUNTLESS others) have had the same problems with it crashing, not >printing correctly, and so on. It DOES work better on 2.5MB and 4MB machines >and in mono than in color, but it's still VERY temperamental. I feel ripped >off as well, although I only ended up losing about $25 on it. If anyone DOES >still use it, it's a good idea to save your work every few sentences. I still use Word Up with a colour monitor and only 2 megs via a MEGA STE. I like it because I used to use it a lot both in french and english ( on the same page) and found this easier that WP 5.1 on the IBM. Some people have better luck with it than others. BTW, I save my work only every half hour, as per my work on WP. Al Sam basically stated that there is no upgrading work planned for Word Up. *******Brian********* Written on Friday 20 November 1992 at 01:03 a.m. AST ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 51 Fri Nov 20, 1992 EXPLORER.5 [Bob] at 19:37 EST Thanks, folks. I guess that's better than another Atari-only format. If I heard John correctly, Postscript Type 1s weren't used because they weren't fast enough for screen output? Even with bitmap cacheing? Maybe PageStream will allow using Speedo fonts and we can finally have a single font system for Atari. |) | |)O|) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 52 Sat Nov 21, 1992 VANDENHEUVEL at 16:42 EST Wilfred, thanks for the note on Papyrus working with FSM and Speedo but what I REALLY want to know is if there is a English language version available or planned? Do you know? and if so where do I send my check? I love Redacteur 3.0s speed and features but its way of doing WYSIWYG when it comes to printing is a nightmare! Papyrus looks like a dream.. --Dirk-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 53 Sat Nov 21, 1992 C.HERBORTH [-Chris-] at 23:49 EST So, is SpeedoGDOS going to be released in '92? '93? '01? I'd certainly be happy if it came out Dec.92 and worked nicely with any "normal" GDOS applications (ie, ones that work properly and don't try any weird tricks)... If PageStream and Calamus add SpeedoGDOS support, it'll definitely be awesome. I'm assuming that it'll work with things like Calligrapher without modification (*knock* *knock* on wood). -Chris- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 54 Sun Nov 22, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 16:17 EDT We have talked with the people who produce Papyrus during our trips to Germany. They have SpeedoGDOS and I have used it with SpeedoGDOS. As for licensing it.. well, I think they are doing just fine on their own! -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 55 Sun Nov 22, 1992 D.FLORY [ALERTsys*Cop] at 17:01 EDT I sure hope that Speedo GDOS is easier to get set up right than the current version. I've spent two days trying to setup Calligrapher and I still get blank pages printed from graphics text mode! Took me a day and a half to get all the fonts show up in font menu. Heaven help the new Atari owner is s/he has to setup a GDOS using program without an experienced user to help, and I thought I was experienced, having set up a half a dozen such programs. Dave Flory, ALERTsys*Cop 13:44 PST - 11/22/92 ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 56 Tue Nov 24, 1992 VANDENHEUVEL at 00:10 EST John, you wouldn't have any idea 1)if there is an English-language version of Papyrus (or Signum 3 while we're at it)? and 2)where I can get those programs? And while DDT might be "doing just fine on their own" in Germany I think they could use some help over here--esp if there ISNT an English version yet. Thanks for your help.. --Dirk-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 57 Tue Nov 24, 1992 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 12:49 EST Dave Flory, I know what you mean. 90% of our tech support calls are from people having problems with their GDOS setup. Luckily, we are on the verge of releasing Calligrapher 3, which eliminates GDOS/G+Plus. I wonder if the phone will ever ring again after that. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 58 Tue Nov 24, 1992 NEVIN-S at 22:45 EST What does Calligrapher 3 use in place of GDOS? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 59 Wed Nov 25, 1992 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:35 EST >I know what you mean. 90% of our tech support calls are from people having >problems with their GDOS setup. Luckily, we are on the verge of releasing >Calligrapher 3, which eliminates GDOS/G+Plus. I wonder if the phone will ever >ring again after that. Luckily for all of us, John, you and us, both. Phone? People use the phone to talk to you, too? Calligrapher 3 should be great. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 60 Thu Nov 26, 1992 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 00:16 EST Nevin, Calligrapher 3 still uses its own outline font technology, it just does the GDOS part of it internally, eliminating the confusion of ASSIGN.SYS and GDOS in the AUTO folder. It really is unbelievable how much trouble people have with GDOS. We hardly have any other calls other than these problems. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 61 Thu Nov 26, 1992 R.BEATTY3 [Buffalo Bob] at 18:57 EST I can understand the frustration developers must feel waiting for a serious working font system for the ST/TT lineup. But to pursue YAPFS (Yet Another Proprietary Font System) creates a headache for users that is one of the greatest underlying problems for the ST. I own PageStream, Calamus and Wordflair; each with their own font system. I liked what I saw in Calligrapher, but don't need another font technology, and never could get it to work on my TT with FSM GDOS. Not wanting to go back to G+Plus (and upgrade to the TT caompatible version), I sold Calligrapher and am _still_ searching for the perfect (near-perfect?) wordprocessor. Oh, yeah... I've got UltraScript too. More proprietary fonts. If I tried to obtain a full selection of the add-on fonts for all those systems (except PGS w/ those wonderful Postscript Type-1s) I'd never have been able to afford the computer that runs them. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 62 Fri Nov 27, 1992 EXPLORER.5 [Bob] at 17:07 EST Bob, I agree with your headache over yet another proprietary font system. It's an old story, however, and the argument in favor of a unified font system doesn't seem to have made much impression on developers. Until now. Bitstream Speedo fonts are not proprietary in the sense that only a limited number of applications use them. Bitstream is an established font foundry that has a wide enough market base to provide some security in the format. Bitstream provides _real_ support to application developers wishing to access their fonts. Calamus probably won't support Speedo format, but I'll bet real money that PageStream does. Now here's where the GDOS concept shows its beauty, maybe the only beauty it has. Any application that supports GDOS doesn't have to go through the development cycle to support scalable Speedo fonts. Once Atari releases the new GDOS, applications such as Wordflair can immediately use the new fonts, including any fonts you can get from third parties. I'll agree that using the Speedo format instead of the more common Type 1 format may be questionable. The only reason I can think of for doing that would be to improve screen display speed, and there hasn't been an asnwer from Atari on that yet. But it's better than using Imagen's format, and better than anything we've had before. Now all Atari has to do is actually release a working version. Hopefully soon. |) | |)O|) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 63 Fri Nov 27, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 19:57 EDT Chris.. I can't give a release date at this point. I wish I could tell you it was available now. I do know that we have things moving fairly quickly. Right now, SpeedoGDOS is going through a limited Developer Beta Test cycle similar to MultiTOS. We don't expect that cycle to last for long. I hope to be able to give you some specific information on when you should be able to SpeedoGDOS very soon. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 64 Fri Nov 27, 1992 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 20:18 EST Buffalo Bob, Calligrapher includes a special version of G+Plus. There's no need to upgrade any previous versions of G+Plus. As the demo says, you'll need to disable FSM GDOS to install any other GDOS/ G+Plus. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 65 Mon Nov 30, 1992 C.HERBORTH [-Chris-] at 20:46 EST Buffalo Bob, That's precisely why I want to see SpeedoGDOS ASAP, and I want to see PageStream/Calamus/Calligrapher/STalker/etc/etc/etc support for it. Then we'll be able to throw out all of those proprietary fonts (hmm, and Calamus will suddenly have hinted fonts...) and use the same thing. You can get _CD-ROMs_ full of BitStream fonts... -Chris- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 66 Mon Nov 30, 1992 C.HERBORTH [-Chris-] at 23:43 EST Thanks for the info Towns... I'm looking forward to Speedo more than I am MultiTOS! -Chris- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 67 Wed Dec 02, 1992 S.NOAH [Stu] at 06:39 EST With the introduction of SPEEDO GDOS will there be a way to have multiple printers installed simultaneously, each to its own i/o port (ie. one on serial- 1, one on LPT1, and one on serial-2) ? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 68 Thu Dec 03, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 21:53 EDT SpeedoGDOS will support multiple printers as long as your application will let you print to other printer devices besides 21. You could install a printer on device 22, 23, or 24 as well. -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 69 Fri Dec 04, 1992 S.NOAH [Stu] at 02:44 EST Actually, my question regarding multiple printers was a little more involved than just "will Speedo GDOS handle multiple printers". What I would really like to know is ... Can I somehow set up my system so that the output to my Deskjet (for the sake of argument device 21) always goes to my parallel port, and output for my dot matrix printer (for the sake of argument device 23) always goes to serial port #1. I know that I can redirect printer output from the control panel but this only works for the default printer (device 21 I assume). Being able to install a printer driver, associate that driver with an I/O port (either a physical one or a virtual (ie. network emulated) one), and then to be able to select that printer by it's name (not a number) is one of the most valuable features of M.S. Windows. If there is any way at all of incorporating any of these features into any future software I for one would be one really happy camper. Thank you, Stu ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 70 Fri Dec 04, 1992 ST.REPORT [Ralph] at 08:10 EST How's the Truetype situation progressing??? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 71 Fri Dec 04, 1992 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 12:15 EST Stu, You can use the Printer Setup CPX to define which port you want the printer output to go to. I don't think you can have both the serial and the parallel port set up to print at the same time. You could, however, have your printers plugged into the desired ports, and then use the printer set up CPX to select which port to print to. Of course you would also have to ensure that you had the correct printer driver selected from the GDOS Printer Driver CPX. regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 72 Sat Dec 05, 1992 S.NOAH [Stu] at 01:47 EST Even if it isn't being done now, is it possible to have a CPX or other program assign different output ports to different GDOS devices (ie. printers) ? This would be nice in that it would save the user from having to go through two steps (selecting the printer device, and then selecting the printer port) each time they wish to rediect output to a different printer. It would also be one less chance for things to go wrong (ie. redirect output without selecting a different driver or vice versa). Stu ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 73 Sat Dec 05, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 03:11 EDT There is currently no mechanism to re-direct output from a device to another device. I will pass along the suggestion. However, we are fast approaching our target release date for SpeedoGDOS, and I don't think we will be able to do a major change like that before then. -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 74 Sun Dec 06, 1992 S.NOAH [Stu] at 01:27 EST John, Thank you for the consideration and passing the suggestion along. After doing end user support for so long, it is really nice to be able to tell someone to "Just pull down the 'File' menu, choose 'Print Setup', and then select the printer you wish to use. This and not having to carry around a 20 page guide to MultiMate/HP imbedded font codes has been a real personal boon. {;) Stu ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 75 Mon Dec 07, 1992 ATARIAUSTRIA [J.Widi] at 12:06 EST John, I think that the FontGDOS/Speedo printer CPX can already accomplish the level of redirection Stu was asking for (I don't have Speedo installed on the machine I'm currently using to write this message so correct me if I'm wrong). Stu asked: >Can I somehow set up my system so that the output to my Deskjet >(for the sake of argument device 21) always goes to my parallel >port, and output for my dot matrix printer (for the sake of >argument device 23) always goes to serial port #1. and that is precisely what the setup CPX does. You use it - among other things and provided the selected printer driver does support it - to configure the driver to permanently use a specific output port. Stu, would that be enough to make You happy? ;-) -Johannes ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 76 Mon Dec 07, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 14:06 EDT Dirk.. My understanding was that there were companies lined up to sell Papyrus here in the US and that just getting the deal going was the only thing stopping immediate distribution. -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 77 Mon Dec 07, 1992 VANDENHEUVEL at 23:07 EST John, if that's the case--great! However I don't really want to wait I'd like to get it as soon as possible. From working with the demo it seems "almost" as fast as my current fave, Redacteur 3.15, but with the WYSIWYG features of Calligrapher. I faxed Digital Desktop about a week asking for more info (ie english lang version? US distributors?) and haven't heard back. I work at an import company and we do a lot of shipments from Germany so assuming there is an English lang version I should be able to get it ASAP. If you can help (-is there an Eng version?) let me know.Thanks. --Dirk-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 78 Mon Dec 07, 1992 S.NOAH [Stu] at 23:45 EST Johannes, Well you have a good idea of what I wan't to accomplish, however the current printer CPX only lets one set the output port for the default printer. For example, if I have a Deskjet on LPT1 and a Dot matrix printer on serial1, and then set the printer CPX for serial1, if I later choose to use the Deskjet driver I would have to return to the printer CPX to change the setting to LPT1. The one other thing that I would like to see, and this probably has to do more with the application using GDOS rather than GDOS itself, would be the ability choose printers based on the device name. As an example: The Font- GDOS CPX lets me select installed devices based on their name (ie STFAX, or DESKJET 500 as opposed to 21 and 23) but outprint from EZdraw only allows printers to be selected by their device number. Thank you for the input, Stu ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 79 Mon Dec 28, 1992 L.BUDNICK [Lorne] at 15:03 EST Any new word on when we might expect to see SPEEDO released? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 80 Sun Jan 03, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 04:00 EST Well, the software is just about wrapped. In fact, we put together what we consider a "user version" right before we left on vacation. I imagine that we will want to beat on it for alittle while longer while all the last minute issues are dealt with. I do know that the licensing from BitStream is apparently a done deal. So, at this point.. it is pretty darn close. Us software folk are pushing very hard to release this baby! -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 81 Sun Jan 03, 1993 M.JONES52 [Jonesy] at 14:42 EST John, That's some good news to start the new year with. Tnx. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 82 Sun Jan 03, 1993 SAM-RAPP [<>] at 17:53 EST John, contrary to the impression you might get from some in this Round Table, there are a lot of people who appreciate your efforts (and others at Atari) to make sure that when you have a product ready to ship, the customer will get a product that works as advertised. Now just make sure it's CHEAP!!! ------------> Sam ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 83 Sun Jan 03, 1993 E.KRIMEN [Ed Krimen] at 19:49 EST Sounds great, John! Thanks for the update. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 84 Mon Jan 04, 1993 S.DANUSER [Soul Manager] at 01:16 EST Towns - Great news on Speedo. I echo Sam's kudos that Atari is pushing for a stable product (though I will probably be called Mr. Atari Glee Club again). Sounds like things are really shaping up for the U.S. launch of the Falcon. Now if AtariWorks (or whatever) just gets wrapped up as well... Soul Manager ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 85 Mon Jan 04, 1993 VANDENHEUVEL at 01:30 EST John, have you guys decided how you're going to release it yet? ie is it going to be on GEnie like FontGDOS or are we going to have to buy it-and where-and how much?? Also totally unreleated (please don't shoot topic cops)..my new STE has surface mounted chips so I cannot get an ADSPEED installed. When did you start this TERRIBLE idea? (my old STE got fried by lightning and no one thought my motherboard swap from Atari would show up before 1994 so I bought a new one..) --Dirk-- PS if you wanna answer this is in E-mail to keep the sysops happy that's fine. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 86 Fri Jan 08, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 11:19 EST Dirk, I don't anything about the surface mount chips in MegaSTEs. I thought the CPU was still socketed, but then again.. I am not in manufacturing. As for SpeedoGDOS.. it will be sold. Sorry folks, but we are talking about a product with licensing fees and Atari can't just eat those fees and forget about them. But, I don't think SpeedoGDOS will be expensive. Hopefully, we will have more information for you soon! -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 87 Fri Jan 08, 1993 K.HOUSER [Kevin MQ Def] at 11:34 EST John, I'm testing some of my stuff with Speedo and wanted to try some of the 'easily' available Bitstream fonts. What should I buy and who sells the fonts? EggHead? Software Etc.? --Kevin ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 88 Sat Jan 09, 1993 B.REHBOCK [BILL@ATARI] at 05:02 EST Kevin, You can pick up any of the Bitstream "Type Essentials" font paks that are readily available for about $70 street price. You can also call Bitstream's Font Order line: 1-800-522-FONT. Simply tell them that you would like to order fonts in PC-Speedo format. (You may have to specify 720k disks, too.) I have seen Type Essentials at Egghead and Comp USA. -Bill ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 89 Sun Jan 10, 1993 S.JOHNSON10 [Steve] at 02:18 EST K.HOUSER - I went to an Egghead Software store here in Atlanta just a few days ago and they didn't carry ANY Speedo Bitstream fonts (they just had some of the Bitstream Windows TrueType font packages). ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 90 Wed Jan 13, 1993 K.BROOKS1 [New Horizon] at 02:02 EST Steve & K.Houser..... and for that matter, all others reading this topic, we'll be looking at carrying ALL the Makeup, Facelift, Companion etc paks from Bitstream. The catalog of all PC Speedo fonts is on the way to us from Boston. I called our suppliers in both Toronto and Vancouver (Ingram & Merisel) but they don't carry all of the fonts. They do have the Companion Value Pak but mostly carry the Windows and WordPerfect versions in Speedo format. The new CHARTER font is _very_ nice indeed! It is part of the Companion package. And hey..... Speedo GDOS is F...A...S...T as greased lightning. Fonts come up so fast for the screen and print to the SLM is about 300% faster than with FSM. Stay tuned... as soon as we have the catalog and some pricing info I'll post again. Keith Brooks New Horizon ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 91 Sat Feb 20, 1993 H.WOLFE1 at 21:10 EST For the last few years I've had Atari laser printers. However, now I'm very seriously considering buying an HP Laserjet 4. The quality of its output is amazing. However, this raises some questions about possible problems. 1. If I do purchase this printer, are the GDOS drivers that are currently available capable of supporting the HP 4 or only the earlier versions fo the Laserjet (I have the drivers that come with FONT GDOS)? 2. If the drivers do support this printer, then do they only support its 300 dpi mode or do they also support its 600 dpi mode? 3. Does Speedo GDOS support the 600 dpi mode of the Laserjet 4? 4. If GDOS or Speedo GDOS do work with it, how slow are they? I admit that I'm accustomed to having pages print almost instantaneously and I'm concerned that at 600 dpi, it may take a long long time to transfer 4 megabytes of data over the parallel port. Is it possible that this a case where the reality is that it's simply not practical to use an HP 4 with FSM GDOS or SPEEDO GDOS? I'd really appreciate any comments from anyone who has used this printer with FSM GDOS or SPEEDO GDOS? Thanks, Harvey Wolfe ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 92 Sun Feb 21, 1993 R.WILSON36 [Bob Wilson] at 13:26 EST With regard to existing non SPEEDO programs; How does SPEEDO support these? Do we need something like an EXTEND.SYS file or some such which was the way to go with FSM? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 93 Sun Feb 21, 1993 B.GOCKLEY [Brian G.] at 17:05 EST Just a quick question whether or not there is a Type 1 to Speedo conversion prg yet? I know that the newer BitStream font packages contain both formats, but I have some old Type 1s hanging around that would be nice to use. Brian G. @ ST Informer ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 94 Sun Feb 21, 1993 D.FLORY [ALERTsys*Cop] at 17:13 EST I haven't used it with an HP 4, all I can say is that it comes with a driver for: ATARI LASER PRINTER ATARI SMM804 PRINTER CANON BUBBLE JET 10e EPSON FX-80 EPSON LQ-570 HP PAINJET HP DESKJET 500 HP LASERJET NEC P-SERIES OKIMATE20 STAR NB24-15 STAR NX-1000 Don't know anything else about the drivers as I have an SLM605, but if you know if any of the others have 600 dpi it might imply whether the HP driver has that implemented. Best way is to call Atari at 408-745-2000 and ask. (-: Happy Bytes :-) Dave Flory, ALERTsys*Cop 09:07 PST - 02/21/9 ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 95 Sun Feb 21, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 19:55 EST What we need is a Printer Driver Construction Set. If the driver for your printer isn't in there, then create your own. :-) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 96 Sun Feb 21, 1993 R.WILSON36 [Bob Wilson] at 20:00 EST The printers listed in message 94 are at their best 300 DPI. A single laserjet driver does not even take advantage of teh data compression avail able on the LJ3. Also missing is any postscript driver. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 97 Mon Feb 22, 1993 K.BROOKS1 [New Horizon] at 01:32 EST The HP4 print, even at 300dpi does not compare to the quality of the same Speedo fonts output on an SLM. Simple. I have seen it - did it myself on the new HP4 with MS Word For Windoze. The HP4 driver I d/l from Microsoft doesn't work in Windoughs. However, just printing to an HPLaserJet III in Winduhs (using a III driver, that is) the Bitstream fonts are not as nice as those same fonts off an SLM. I'll post again once I've got the 600dpi resolution running. Keith Brooks New Horizon ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 98 Mon Feb 22, 1993 B.REHBOCK [BILL@ATARI] at 02:41 EST Harvey, SpeedoGDOS will currently support the LJ4 in 300dpi mode only. We will have a 600dpi driver in a little while. It will be fast. The OUTLINE utility that runs as an accessory or application allows you to set up a list of "Active Fonts" and define what point sizes you wish to make available. These appear to "old" applications like multiple bit maps from old GDOS. This works with EasyDraw quite nicely. If all you run is SpeedoGDOS- aware applications, you can set it up for only one point size, which speedos up font loading. Brain, there is no Type-1 to Speedo conversion currently available. -Bill@Atari ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 99 Tue Feb 23, 1993 STEVE-J [FunkPopARoll] at 00:50 EST R.WATSON15 - I've wished EVERYONE had a Printer Driver Construction Set of some kind. I get sick of reading the standard "if there isn't a driver for your printer, try some of the ones available and use the one that yields the best results" piece of useless information in manuals. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 100 Thu Feb 25, 1993 S.NOAH [Stu] at 01:54 EST You might want to add a 1200 dpi mode to the LJ IV driver as there are now a few different 1200 dpi enhancements for this printer. But then I guess that you would have to have specs for each of these boards... guess I just answered my own question, never mind. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 101 Tue Mar 02, 1993 J.FRENCH2 [James French] (Forwarded) I phoned the Bitstream 800 number today and found out that they have no SPEEDO foreign language fonts and that they were not planning on releasing any in the near future. This is really too bad. I thought that finally I would have easy access to high quality and inexpensive Cyrillic word processing. Oh well. Atari -- are there third party developers of SPEEDO fonts that could provide me with foreign language fonts? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 102 Wed Mar 03, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 08:11 EST J.FRENCH2 [James French] > >I phoned the Bitstream 800 number today and found out that they have no SPEEDO >foreign language fonts and that they were not planning on releasing any in the >near future. This is really too bad. I thought that finally I would have >easy access to high quality and inexpensive Cyrillic word processing. Oh >well. Atari -- are there third party developers of SPEEDO fonts that could >provide me with foreign language fonts? James, their answer was not 100% correct. SPEEDO fonts are available in different classes (types), depending on class you can have up to 380-564 characters in 1 font so I'm rather sure that all needed foreigh characters are there. Atari will come with a program with which you can map those characters onto the standard 256 characters of your ST. This program makes it also possible to install a IBM-mapping or an Mac-mapping which makes importing and printing documents from MS-DOS or Mac machines much easier. I think that Bill Rehbock can/will fill me in if I was not 100% correctly. Regards, ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 103 Wed Mar 03, 1993 K.HEINRICHS [K.Heinrichs] at 14:16 EST Can anyone tell me if there will be a HP LaserJet 4 driver made for Speedo GDOS? It would sure be a shame to only get 300 dpi out of this great printer. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 104 Wed Mar 03, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 17:17 EST f V There is a LaserJet driver, but there is no specific LaserJet 4 driver. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 105 Thu Mar 04, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:52 EST James French, What you'd probably need is a conversion program to make Speedo fonts out of other ones. I don't doubt that such a program will be along soon for the ST/TT/Falcon. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 106 Mon Mar 08, 1993 MIKE-FULTON [Mike Fulton] at 23:07 EST Steve Johnson, No, Mike Fulton isn't going to get on John's ass about the comment about the WordUp source code. Almost of all of the code that needed updating was stuff that I didn't write. Besides, I myself have said much, much worse at times about it. Mike ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 107 Tue Mar 09, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 20:44 EST Did I say something bad about WordUp source code? I don't remember saying anything bad.. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 108 Wed Mar 10, 1993 T.EVANS21 [] at 18:47 EST Atari Corp: I noticed that the new Atari Works document processor (from looking at the screen shots in AEO this week), looks an awful lot like: My still & very most favorite, old "WORD UP 3.0"??? You devils you... :) <-:}Ted{:-> Wednesday, March 10, 1993 - 7:50:56 am ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 109 Thu Mar 11, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 13:26 EST Actually, the only thing that might be considered part of WordUp 3.0 is the spelling checker. Everything else was original design and wasn't stolen from WordUp 3.0 at all. - John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 110 Thu Mar 11, 1993 J.LYONS16 [John L.] at 20:37 EST Towns, If I remember right, you said something about the source code was so poorly documented that it was practically useless (or something similar). ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 111 Thu Mar 11, 1993 K.BROOKS1 [New Horizon] at 21:28 EST One can only hope that there won't be any .RSC objects outside of the windows ala Calligrapher, EasyDraw, WordUp, LDW and so forth. MultiTOS seems to be somewhat fragile in these instances. I know, I know, they should all run inside a GEM window. Others come to mind that lock up - ST FAX, Papyrus, Interlink, Arcshell, oh well. Nice icons and 3D buttons though. Keith Brooks ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 112 Thu Mar 11, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 21:54 EST Oh No! Interlink locks up Multitos?? And Aladdin doesn't work either? Now what am I supposed to use? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 113 Thu Mar 11, 1993 D.A.BRUMLEVE [kidprgs] at 22:07 EST David, use Interlink or Aladdin. Disable MultiTOS for incompatible programs. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 114 Fri Mar 12, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:44 EST David, I understand Aladdin runs just fine under MultiTOS. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 115 Fri Mar 12, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 05:26 EST No, Aladdin works just fine with MTOS. I'm using that combo right now... ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 116 Fri Mar 12, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 10:00 EST > "No, Aladdin works just fine with MTOS." That's funny, what I heard was that although Aladdin "works" it locks the screen during autopasses so that you can't do anything in another program until the Autopass is over. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 117 Fri Mar 12, 1993 T.EVANS21 [] at 18:03 EST John, What I meant was: The screen shot in AEO on-line looks a lot like, (similar) to Word Up.. It's a lot like meeting an old girl friend with a new 'do' and different make up.. And she looks better somehow, improved if you know what I mean..... :) I'm sure it's been reworked and a lot different now.. I am anxiously awaiting it's debut into 'our' world... I have often wondered. as many of us have why did Atari purchase the rights to WU, and then do nothing with it.. Or so we assumed?? Later, <-:}Ted{:-> Friday, March 12, 1993 - 7:04:18 am ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 119 Fri Mar 12, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 23:29 EST Fairweather, Aladdin does lock the screen during autopasses. I don't mind much, though... I then use my human multitasking to get something to eat... or go to the potty... :) Maybe the infamous Aladdin 2.0 coming up will solve that. (um, the locking, not my potty breaks) ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 120 Sat Mar 13, 1993 M.SQUIRE [Mike] at 08:46 EST John & Ted E., From the screen shots that I've seen in Atari Explorer Online, the Atari Works word processor looks a lot more like Microsoft Word for Windows v1.0 than it does WordUp v3.0. ... Mike Squire ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 121 Sat Mar 13, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 08:53 EST If Aladdin locks the screen during an autopass so that you can't multi-task, that just means you can't multi-task while Aladdin is doing an autopass. It doesn't mean that Aladdin doesn't work under MultiTOS. If a program runs under MultiTOS and gives you the same features that it gives you without MultiTOS, then it is "MultiTOS Compatible", even though it may not be fully multi-taskable. If everyone expects every one of their programs to allow multi-tasking, they're going to be sadly disappointed with MultiTOS. One must also understand that the term "multi-tasking" is basically a misnomer in this case anyway. If there's only one CPU in your machine, it's not multi-tasking, it's task- switching automatically. The CPU can only do one thing at a time. If you think you're going to be able to download a file and compile your source code at the same time without taking any longer than either task alone would take, you'll be disappointed. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 122 Sat Mar 13, 1993 AFINKEL [andy] at 13:58 EST John: when you have more than one processor, the currently in-vogue term is 'multi-processing'. Multitasking is what using one processor to run multiple tasks is called these days. I would guess that it will take a bit of time for programs to adapt to the new multitasking environment, ie not lock their screens while downloading, or compile, or whatever. But when downloading at 2400 baud, I can compile with no noticable speed drop on the Amiga...the CPU gets to spend a lot of time waiting for the next buffer to be available from the serial card, since my hard drive is DMA, there's idle time for the CPU while the transfer is taking place, and so on. It did take a release or so for the Amiga to multitask well; you'll probably go through the same process with MiNT. But I'm sure you'll find it worth it; multitasking is just _so_ convenient. (and I _am_ compiling a program as I type this :-) ) andy ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 123 Sat Mar 13, 1993 MIKE.KELLER [ST Aladdin] at 17:57 EST Re: Aladdin and MultiTOS... If and when Tim Purves gets a Falcon and MultiTOS, or the docs, or the Falcons hit the street, then you might want to expect Aladdin to be altered to fully allow multitasking. However, please remember that Tim has done a number of things to speed up Aladdin on an Atari, custom stuff that might slow down if you tried to multitask during, say, an autopass. I can understand the desire to be doing "something else" while Aladdin is online. However, Aladdin is doing a lot of stuff during that autopass already. I'm sure Tim isn't reading this topic (he's only programming two and a half platforms), so if you want to communicate your MultiTOS concerns, visit the ST Aladdin RT. mike.k ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 124 Sun Mar 14, 1993 T.EVANS21 [] at 09:23 EST Mike, You may be right.. I've never seen Microsoft Word, or Atari works.. Still, it looked liked Word Up to me.. Later, <-:}Ted{:-> Saturday, March 13, 1993 - 8:26:00 pm ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 125 Sun Mar 14, 1993 S.DOUGHERTY1 [Sean@TWP] at 11:53 EST Does anyone know if BitStream plans on putting the word "Atari" on any of their font packages? Something like, "for use on IBM and 100% compatibles, and Atari Computers," for instance? The more places Atari can get their name the better. Sean Dougherty Two Worlds Publishing ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 126 Sun Mar 14, 1993 D.SHORR at 15:13 EST Sean@TWP, Bitstream now has their own area here; you'll find it on page 1375. There is a Speedo topic in CAT 25. Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 127 Sun Mar 14, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 17:06 EST I thought it looked like Microsoft Word, too. Very impressive! Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 128 Sun Mar 14, 1993 D.FLORY [ALERTsys*Cop] at 22:15 EST John, does Hotwire work with MTOS? If not then I guess I may not need MTOS until it does. (-: Happy Bytes :-) Dave Flory, ALERTsys*Cop 18:14 PST - 03/14/93 ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 129 Mon Mar 15, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:46 EST John, Multitasking is, indeed, what MultiTOS does, even though you are right in viewing the multiple tasks that a single CPU is given as task-switching of a sort. The reason Mtos can be considered a multitasking system (like OS/2 and GeoWorks) is that it performs preemptive switching, allowing applications that need processor time to get more CPU slices than apps that are generally sitting idle waiting for keypresses (such as word processors). There is a lot of wasted CPU time in such applications, and a good multitasker makes the total CPU throughput more efficient because it allocates its tasks sensibly. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 130 Mon Mar 15, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 10:28 EST Andy.. its been a long time since we have seen you in these parts, eh? Good to see you again. I hope that all is well in your part of the world and that you made it through the blizzard okay! -- John PS. To stay on topic, I agree with Andy.. Multiprocessing describes a system with multiple processors and Multitasking describes a system with more than one thread of execution. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 133 Tue Mar 16, 1993 GREEN at 22:40 EST Has anyone tried Speedogdos with any of the gdos programs, such as Wordflair II, Touchup, Easy Draw, and others? If so, could you post a compaability report. Thanks. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 134 Wed Mar 17, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 01:00 EST Speedo wirks fine with WordFlair... I don't hae the others. ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 135 Wed Mar 17, 1993 T.EVANS21 [] at 18:32 EST GREEN: So who's got SpeedoGDOS?? It's packaged with the "Falcon".. So nobody has it right now... :-) "Happy St. Patricks Day, & I'm using Green floppies".. ;) <-:}Ted{:-> Wednesday, March 17, 1993 - 7:24:20 am ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 136 Wed Mar 17, 1993 J.SPANDE [John Spande] at 20:34 EST I had occassion to use EasyDraw with SpeedoGDOS today and can report that it works but... The problem is with slow drawing of text on the screen. EasyDraw apparently forces the fonts to be reloaded every time a text block is redrawn on the screen (yes, that's each and every block). If you have a lot of small blocks it can take several minutes to redraw the screen, not to mention a bit of wear and tear on the disk drive. Printing is fast however, and the results look great. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 137 Thu Mar 18, 1993 B.REHBOCK [BILL@ATARI] at 04:10 EST EasyDraw is one of those applications that wants width tables on. The problem with Width Tables is the fact that they are resolution and font size specific and do cause applications to take longer to launch. Migraph should be aware of this problem. -Bill@Atari ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 138 Thu Mar 18, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:38 EST It was my understanding that MiGraph had abandoned EasyDraw. Perhaps if there are a lot of Falcon owners who demand it, they will do an upgrade. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for it, since PageStream, and possibly other programs, have many of the same capabilities built in as EasyDraw provides. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 139 Thu Mar 18, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 12:19 EST You know.. Easy Draw has _always_ had slow redraws when you have anything more than a couple of objects on the page at once. Isn't there a mode to turn off the drawing of objects and just display boxes in their place? Maybe I'm thinking of IMG files or something. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 140 Thu Mar 18, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 21:19 EST I've got Speedo! (proudly showing his beta tester pin) ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 141 Fri Mar 19, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:55 EST John, I haven't used it in a while, but I'm 99.99% sure EasyDraw does let you turn off the objects. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 142 Fri Mar 19, 1993 AEO.3 [Lyre] at 18:50 EST Greetings Everyone! The following is just a teeny tiny tease for those of you without Speedo. In order to produce an article for AEO I needed a copy of Speedo. So, after receiving this program I did the logical thing - I installed it. Of course, it might have been a bit more intelligent to go to drive C:\ and change the name of my Calligrapher 2 ASSIGN.SYS file. But then, maybe not. Otherwise I would not have noticed something. Appearently when you are installing Speedo it takes into account the fact that you might already have an ASSIGN.SYS file. If you do, it renames it as ASSIGN.OLD. Although this is not an "earth shaking" feature of Speedo, I thought you all might like to hear of this little tid bit. Lyre 9:22 pm, March 18, 1993 ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 143 Fri Mar 19, 1993 G.ANDERSON at 21:15 EST Not bad Lyre, sounds a lot like the old WordUp install feature... I wonder why ? As for EasyDraw.... has anyone actually tried to talk to Mighraph about EasyDraw? there must be some way of fixing this problem, I've been using EZD for years and really like it. To match it's drafting abilities I'd have to go to the 2D version of DynaCADD (far more powerful program of course) and give up being able to import my drawings into Calamus, PageStream, and what have you. Any suggestions? Gregg ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 144 Sat Mar 20, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 08:20 EST Lyre, The FSMGDOS installation program renames the ASSIGN.SYS file as .OLD, too. It's handy! Gregg, The MiGraph folks are very helpful on the phone, but it would be too bad if a lot of people had to call to get an update on EasyDraw. It would be nice if they would check their topic(s) occasionally to hear what users are saying. It would also seem to be good business, but maybe we Atarians aren't their major source of support anymore. Certainly not the only one. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 145 Sat Mar 20, 1993 M.DRYSDALE [Drys] at 09:23 EST Lyre - FSMGDOS also is smart enough to rename ASSIGN to .OLD. Mike, GenTech and POWER Computers ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 146 Sat Mar 20, 1993 J.SPANDE [John Spande] at 11:37 EST I tried turning on Widthtables for EasyDraw and it works great! Screen redraws are faster than I remember them being with the original GDOS. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 147 Sat Mar 20, 1993 M.EVERHART2 [MIDIMIKE] at 15:30 EST Greg - I have communicated with Migraph several times and they "have no present or future plans to upgrade EasyDraw". ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 148 Sat Mar 20, 1993 M.EVERHART2 [MIDIMIKE] at 17:09 EST John Spande - I lost track of the thread - are you successful in getting SPEEDO GDOS or FSMGDOS to work with EasyDraw? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 149 Sat Mar 20, 1993 AEO.3 [Lyre] at 21:27 EST Gregg, This might be a WordUp install feature, but I never purchased WordUp. At the time WordUp was released, I looked at it. But I found that it did not offer me enough new features (excluding fonts) to make purchasing it worthwhile. Between my old word processor and Calamus, I had all of the textual output power that I needed. I purchased Calligrapher simply because it had substantial improvements over my old word processor - improvements that I found mandatory. Lyre 7:53 pm, March 20, 1993 ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 150 Sat Mar 20, 1993 K.SPRINGER1 [FROZEN NORTH] at 23:36 EST Ken Van Easy Draw only lets you disable any IMG images you have in the drawing. There is one exception, and that is if you have the latest version that lets you use bezier curves. Then you can display only the objects you wish, or all of them. About the only time I use it any more is when I want to create a grid. Haven't stumbled onto another vector program that does this. Ken S. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 151 Sun Mar 21, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 01:56 EST Easy Draw works fine with Speedo GDOS, just be sure to create width tables from the OUTLINE.ACC . Speedo also works fine with Touch Up, and I didn't have any width tables then. While I haven't tried Publisher ST 2.0 with Speedo GDOS, I did try it with FSM GDOS. It appeared that the programmers had intentionally placed code in the program to prevent it from working with FSM. One of the few applications that I've seen that has been "hostile" to Speedo. And there is also a STraight FAX driver for use with Speedo GDOS, too. Regarding the printer driver construction set, a nice idea but... I'm told that the creation of a GDOS printer driver of any kind is not a trivial task. I don't think that a printer driver construction set is forthcoming any time soon. best regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 152 Sun Mar 21, 1993 J.SPANDE [John Spande] at 20:50 EST Midimike, yes I got EasyDraw working just fine with SpeedoGDOS. The secret is to turn on width tables, then everything is nice and fast. It's really too bad if Migraph doesn't update EasyDraw. It's so simple to change a GDOS program to fully support SpeedoGDOS and gain the flexability of unlimited point sizes. It should also be very simple for them to then also scale text on the screen at all zooms. It's kind of annoying that text is only really handled properly at normal zoom. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 153 Sun Mar 21, 1993 G.ANDERSON at 21:35 EST I agree, it would be nice if Mighraph would upgrade EasyDraw for us, but I'm not going to hold my breath any more .... One of the main reasons I don't want to drop EasyDraw is that it is the ONLY program I have that I can use to create .GEM graphic files to use in Calamus/PageStream/etc.... I'm all thumbs with Degas and TouchUp's drawing tools and prefer the clean lines (no jagged edges here) you get with EZD's .GEM files. I've not found anything that combines EZD's ease of use, resolution/pringer (oops;;; printer) independent, and almost universal exportability. Find me something that can do all that and I'll think about spending some of my VERY scarce money.... Now, back to our scheduled topic.... I'm pleased to hear that you can gert (get... my keyboard is getting tired on me) some speed with EZD by turning on the fontwidth tables... whatever those are . Tell me, are there any public domain speedo fonts available or are the all commercial? Gregg ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 154 Sun Mar 21, 1993 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 22:26 EST Gregg.. the best place to look would probably be the Bitstream RT here on GEnie. If there aren't any available, I am sure that they would know where you could or could not find any PD fonts. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 155 Mon Mar 22, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:19 EST Maybe MiGraph would move on Speedo GDOS if they got a bunch of letters offering upgrade fees. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 156 Mon Mar 22, 1993 CODEHEAD [Charles] at 13:28 EST Simon Jones, who developed Timeworks Publisher 2 for GST Holdings in Great Britain, contacted me on Compuserve and asked me to post this message here, in reply to Bob Brodie's message #151. Please note that I'm simply forwarding his message as requested; and please direct any further communications to the parties in question. - Charles (message from Simon Jones follows....) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Timeworks Publisher interrogates GDOS to find out which version it is running with. This has been done for a very good reason. When the program was originally written, FSMGDOS was still using the QMS scaler and was in beta. At this time, there where problems with using FSMGDOS which we did not have time to resolve. At a meeting held at Atari UK's office in August 1991, Leonard Tramiel indicated that we would not have to wait too long for FSMGDOS. I made a decision that since FSMGDOS was not supported and we could not guarantee that the beta we then had would be sufficiently similar to the final release that it would be nicer for the program to report that FSMGDOS is not supported rather than run into a problem at a later stage. This decision seems to have been vindicated as history has shown. FSMGDOS is no more; the scaler is now Speedo from Bitstream and is better than before. However, I have yet to see a release product of SpeedoGDOS. Most of the support for scalable fonts is already in Timeworks Publisher but is disabled. It almost works with the last beta of SpeedGDOS which I recieved many months ago. I have always worked on the premise that it is better to report an error before there is any danger of loosing any data than after. Since FSM/SpeedoGDOS has been promised RSN for over two years, I don't think that anyone can blame me for being a little cautious! I would also add that I think it far worse behaviour for a program to try to use FSM/SpeedoGDOS and produce incorrect results/erronious behaviour/crashes than to merely report during startup that FSM/SpeedoGDOS is unsupported and terminate. I have explained many times to Atari personal of all levels the reasons for our using width tables. Admittedly they are mainly historical but there is still a very good case for using them now since bitmapped fonts must still be supported in the Atari world due to the huge number of bitmap fonts that are available. The bottom line is that I had to make a judgment call whether to delay the launch of Timeworks Publisher v2 for the ST and ensure that support for FSM/SpeedGDOS was included or ensure that at least the user was warned that they could not use a particular version of GDOS. If I had decided to wait for FSM/SpeedGDOS then the project would almost certainly never have seen the light of day and a lot of time and money would have been wasted and there would be one less program available on the ST. Of course, Timeworks Publisher has never claimed to support FSM/SpeedGDOS although if you had contacted me I could have explained all of this in far better manner. Bill Rehbock and Atari UK are both aware of our position and I am sure would have provided this information if asked or at least provided a contact point. These are mainly my own personal views and do not necessarily reflect GST's views. Simon Jones ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 157 Mon Mar 22, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 14:48 EST Charles, Thank you for passing along Simon's message. I'm especially aware of the fact that these are his personal views, and do not necessarily reflect the views of his management. That said, width tables is a feature that is available via Speedo GDOS, and was available from FSM. While I respect Simon's contention that termination of his program at startup is preferable to any problems it might have caused, I do not agree with it. The last time that Leonard and I discussed the matter (admittedly quite some time ago) he didn't share that point of view either. I've always admired GST's products. The ability to use different fonts is a quality that both PageStream and Calamus have long had. It's unfortunate that GST has chosen not to support different versions of GDOS in their product. best regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 158 Mon Mar 22, 1993 COMPO at 22:41 EST Gregg - I caught your message in the Bitstream RT, but I think others here would like an answer, too. Because of the way The System works, you won't find Speedo fonts in the public domain. Only commercially. Sorry. On the other hand, the Speedo typefaces are excellent. Every one of them is about as perfect as it gets. Don't forget about font quality. There are a lot of fonts out there that are just lousy (not an opinion about any particular styles or designs, but rather about the care taken in designing them and perfecting the desired outline). Compare, for example, the quality of any particular typeface created by Bitstream with the same typeface from another font foundry. The more you compare the more you'll agree that the Bitstream faces are great. I'm sure of it. The fonts in the Speedo library each contain more kerning data than fonts from other typeface libraries. Bitstream likes to tell people that the fellow who originally designed Palatino has said that Bitstream's version is the closest to his original design of all available versions. Their plugs aside, it really is a very nice typeface that looks superb at any printing resolution. One of the most important reasons, I believe, that Speedo is such a swell system is its quality. There are many nice things about the Speedo scaler, but it's nothing without high quality fonts. It's everything together that make it great. And you don't get greatness in the public domain. Robert ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 159 Tue Mar 23, 1993 G.ANDERSON at 22:14 EST Robert; "you don't get greatness in the public domain. " True, but they are cheap ..... To be honest though, Robert, I've found a LOT of really excellent fonts in GDOS, Calamus, PostScript, PageStream, and what-have-you format... but there are more than a few dogs as well. I want to thank you for coming over and filling us in here in the Atari forum. And to welcome you to the always interesting, usually exciting, and all too often frustrating, world of Atari Computers . I'll be looking forward to exchanging thoughts and information over then next few years. You can ask around at Atari Dev about me, I can be a real pain sometimes but I do have a reputation for caring about the quality of our systems here. Until I can find a source of Speedo fonts AND get my hands on a working copy of AtarWorks WITH the new SpeedoGDOS anything I say will have to be hearsay or third hand. I am looking forward to actually getting my hands on AW/Speedo and running some serious tests against GDOS, G-Plus, and what-have-you. Let me know if you need a good beta tester . Once again, thanks for the visit and the reply. Welcome to the gang, and watch out for flying bricks (which usually closely resemble DOS boxes and old Mac's). Gregg ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 160 Wed Mar 24, 1993 SAM-RAPP [<>] at 23:15 EST I seem to recall two or three speedo fonts that were available via ftp somewhere. part of some package or another. hmmm. I will investigate further... ----------> Sam ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 161 Mon May 10, 1993 R.GREIN [Randy Grein] at 02:59 EDT OK, so MultiTOS isn't "multi-tasking". Neither is any other OS on a "single processor" machine. Actually, most of them do time slicing (preemptive multi- tasking), such as windows and OS2, and a few do task switching (non-preemptive multi-tasking) such as Novell (yeah, I'm a CNE. They make us study stuff like this just to share files!) and GEM. In fact, big, bad UNIX also does time slicing; its just that it can handle several processors working on different process threads simultaneously, but each processor still time slices. A fair sized mini might have 5 processors servicing 300 or more users. I realize that you know all about this, but there's a fair number of people out there confused about the whole issue, and I just wanted to set the record straight, especially when comparing MultiTOS to other operating systems. Certainly processor intensive operations such as a compile and download would interfere with each other some; but most people want to do things such as a download and word processing or disk copies and formats. It's really a bore sitting and staring at a screen waiting for a floppy format. OS2 doesn't make you wait, and I'm betting that anything that Microsoft and IBM can almost perfect in 6 years can be matched by Atari and helpful developers in 3. BTW, what about the processors in subsystems? I'm really not that familiar with Atari HW, but there is the DSP on the falcon, and of course keyboard and disk controller chips. How much work do these offload from the CPU, and can the CPU do anything useful in the meantime? Specifically, I'm thinking (in IBM terms) of bus mastering or co-processed devices such as network interface cards, hard drive controllers, and video. Support for such under windows is pretty lame (just try to do simultaneous access to floppy and/or multiple hard drives at the same time) while OS2, Unix and Netware 3.11 all seem to handle it quite easily. This is true, albeit limited true multi processing by handing off tasks to dedicated subsystems AND THEN GOING ON TO DO SOMETHING ELSE!!! Comments? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 162 Mon May 10, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 23:45 EDT Randy, Win 3.1 doesn't do preemptive multitasking. OS/2 does and GeoWorks does, but Windows 3.1 does not. Windows does time slicing, which is a different beast. (The Mac's System 7 works the same way as Win 3.1.) Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 163 Thu May 27, 1993 R.WILSON36 [Bob Wilson] at 11:43 EDT OK, I just got SPEEDO GDOS from COMPO. I have a couple of problems. If I run a program and then go to print either to the printer or to a metafile the printout is finished and then the computer goes into never never land. This program did not have this problem with either GDOS 1.1 G+PLUS or FONT GDOS. Any ideas? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 164 Thu May 27, 1993 COMPO at 18:30 EDT Bob - Does this problem exist with more than one application? Does it happen with all applications, or just one? Can you tell me what program(s) the locking up occurs with, what printer you're using, how much memory is in your computer, and what the SpeedoGDOS cache sizes are. And do you have widthtables turned on? Is your printer listed in the assign.sys as device 21? (You can use the DRIVERS accessory to check that). How are you printing to a metafile? Robert ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 165 Fri May 28, 1993 K.BROOKS1 [New Horizon] at 00:16 EDT Are you by chance running Warp9 with Speedo? Last time I tried it the wp crashed, so did KSpread and any other GDOS program. Keith New Horizon ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 166 Fri May 28, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:24 EDT Bob, I've heard reports that Speedo will not print unless you turn off Warp 9's screen acceleration (using the Warp cfg DA). If you are using Warp, check out this possibility. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 167 Fri May 28, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 13:52 EDT We are aware that Warp 9 does not work with SpeedoGDOS. Before Warp 9 was released, we spent a lot of time making it work with FSMGDOS. FSMGDOS was later changed (breaking Warp 9) and never released. To avoid a similar waste of time, we decided to wait until SpeedoGDOS is officially released before investing our time in making it work. A clever detective might deduce that SpeedoGDOS has been officially released. If someone can confirm this, we'll begin work on Warp 9. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 168 Fri May 28, 1993 P.NEREO [Philip] at 17:07 EDT I just got Speedo from Compo - great fonts! Seems I have to disable Warp 9 with Wordflair II - latest version. The only serious problem I have is with Superbase Pro. When I bring up a previously created form, the data, which is usu. in system font, is much too large. The oversize letters don't fit where they're supposed to. Anyone got any suggestions? If I want to use some bitmap fonts, how do I go about it? Where do they go, and how do I add the appropriate titles to my ASSIGN.SYS and EXTEND.SYS files? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 169 Fri May 28, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 17:26 EDT John: >A clever detective might deduce that SpeedoGDOS has been officially released. >If someone can confirm this, we'll begin work on Warp 9. Psssst John, I just captured a secret message from my system, it said: ---------SpeedoGDOS----------- Bitmap Font Cache Size = 51200 Outline Font Caches: Character = 51200 Miscellaneous = 51200 Bitstream Speedo scaler enabled. GDOS version 4.1 3/5/93 resident. You better start John, since the release of SpeedoGDOS is a fact. It comes with the falcon030 and it comes bundled with several software titels from several software houses all over the world. Here in Europe we have it on the market for several weeks now. And it works together with NVDI (or at least they don't hurt each other). Regards, detective Wilfred ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 170 Fri May 28, 1993 R.WILSON36 [Bob Wilson] at 18:19 EDT Thanks to all. It was indeed the conflict with WARP 9 that caused me problems. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 171 Fri May 28, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 18:29 EDT Wilfred, Thanks. I realize that SpeedoGDOS comes bundled with the Falcon. I've heard rumors that they've actually released the Falcon here in the States. I think you're right. We better start working on it, even though I haven't seen an official announcement. Perhaps I need a bigger magnifying glass. Inspector John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 172 Sat May 29, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:25 EDT Phil, Just turn off the accelerator in your Warp 9 DAT file. That will do the job. I don't think I should help the pirates by telling you how. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 173 Sat May 29, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 10:50 EDT Philip, I responded to your question about the fonts in the previous topic in which you asked about them. Al Ken, Reports I've had say that the only known conflict between Speedo and Warp 9 comes during printing. I'm awaiting my shipment of Speedo with great eagerness, I can tell you that! Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 174 Sat May 29, 1993 VANDENHEUVEL at 21:08 EDT I've used SpeedoGDOS with Warp 9 with no conflicts. Som programs are not quite as Speedo-aware as I might like but I've yet to see a conflict between Speedo and Warp 9. I do notice that Warp 9 doesn't speed up Speedo's display (though thankfully Speedo doesn't really slow down the rest of the system with Warp 9 installed either). I was toying with the idea of using Speedo with Gemini but the directory updates with the system font (changed to Chicago thanks to Warp 9) are just TOO fast to switch..can anything be done to speed Speedo up? -- Dirk-- PS I can't imagine running Speedo on a floppy system, I've only got about 6-8 fonts installed and the delay to load those fonts in is noticeable on my HD on a floppy I think it'd be coffee-break time :}. OOPS..Later: Just tried FirstGraph, Speedo and Warp 9. Prints okay, but then locks up UNLESS you disable Warp 9. I stand corrected. How bout a Warp 9 3.76 guys?? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 175 Sun May 30, 1993 M.ERSOFF at 10:49 EDT To Anyone and Everyone, I was wondering if any of you have used Speedo GDOS with Wordflair II and a Canon bubble jet printer. If any one has used this set up, cpuld you please let me know how or if it works and how does the printed output look.... Any info will be greatly appreciated ...... Mayer ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 176 Sun May 30, 1993 D.SHORR at 13:45 EDT Someone asked earlier about how to manage bitmap fonts with the new SpeedoGDOS. I saw Speedo for the first time yesterday on my dealer's demo Falcon030 and helped him in configuring it. There are two programs included with the Speedo set, DRIVERS and OUTLINE. DRIVERS will modify the ASSIGN.SYS(old GDOS) file and OUTLINE modifies the EXTEND.SYS(new GDOS) file. The only thing DRIVERS seemed to do was to allow the selection of a printer driver to be included in the ASSIGN.SYS file. The OUTLINE program was used for management of the outline fonts and the different caches. I don't believe this program would change the ASSIGN.SYS file(where all the bitmap font filenames would be stored). So from what I saw yesterday, there is no way to manage your old GDOS fonts with Speedo; looks like we'll be buying some more Speedo fonts. Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 177 Mon May 31, 1993 ATARIAUSTRIA [J.Widi] at 06:04 EDT Dave, although the current version of DRIVERS.ACC won't let You add or delete bitmap fonts from Your ASSIGN.SYS file SpeedoGDOS is able to use them just like any other version of GDOS does. You just have to modify Your ASSIGN.SYS the oldfashioned way, using any ASCII-editor. In fact, SpeedoGDOS allows You to handle bitmap fonts much faster than previous versions of GDOS, because it does font caching. You can freely use both Speedo and bitmap fonts at the same time. -Johannes ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 178 Mon May 31, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 12:11 EDT Johannes, You mentioned that "SpeedoGDOS allows You to handle bitmap fonts much faster than previous version of GDOS, because it does font caching." Previous versions of GDOS kept all of the bitmaps in memory, so I don't see how caching would make it any faster. Perhaps they've just optimized some of the slower routines. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 179 Mon May 31, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 12:59 EDT Dave, I heard on the Internet that you can use a bitmap GDOS for the bitmap fonts and SpeedoGDOS for the Speedo fonts, at the same time. NVDI was mentioned as the bitmap GDOS. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 180 Mon May 31, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 15:40 EDT John, I think that we started the font caching with Font GDOS. One of the features of Font GDOS is that it will load a font when it is needed, and then throw it out of the cache when it needs another one. The fonts are not retained all in memory. This was pretty neat to offer to some users that (for example) wanted to use a Canon Bubble Jet with a 520 STE. Prior to Font GDOS, you couldn't do high rez printing with a low ram machine. Dave, I just gotta ask - with the beautiful scalable outline fonts that are now available, why do you WANT to use the Bitmaps??? Mayer- I don't have a Canon Bubble Jet, but I do have a Star Jet SJ-48...the close cousin of the Canon. Same engine, different rom. :) The output is gorgeous!! I used Word Flair II for a long time, now I use Atari Works instead. I'm very impressed with the output and the speed of printing, too. I'm sure it will be neat to see the Falcon030 version of Warp 9 when it is ready. Any ideas on how long that will take? regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 181 Mon May 31, 1993 D.SHORR at 20:30 EDT Bob, I don't want to use bitmap fonts, but someone asked about managing the old fonts with the new Speedo and I'd thought I'd try to give him an answer(I don't believe anyone else did). Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 182 Mon May 31, 1993 P.NEREO [Philip] at 21:58 EDT Bob & Dave - I think I'm the one who asked about using bitmap fonts with Speedo. The reason was the problem I'm having using Speedo with Superbase Pro. Forms that are created in SBPro use GDOS for all print -except- the actual data which can only be viewed and printed in system font. After switching from FSM to Speedo, all the system font letters - on screen and in printout - are several times too large. I thought maybe putting some bitmaps in the system might cure the problem. Can anyone help me out? I'd hate to have to go back to FSM after getting all these beautiful fonts from Compo/Atari/Bitstream; not to mention after waiting expectantly for so long! Anyone using Speedo with Superbase yet? ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 183 Mon May 31, 1993 P.NEREO [Philip] at 23:14 EDT My problem with SBPro was solved by putting the monospaced font in the first five listed in the Outline font setup accessory. It was one of the loaded fonts, but SBPro only recognizes the first 5. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 184 Tue Jun 01, 1993 B.REHBOCK [BILL@ATARI] at 00:04 EDT SpeedoGDOS has been shipping with all hard-disk equipped Falcons world-wide. SpeedoGDOS will be shipping this week as a stand-alone package available to all Atari computer users. The dealer ordering number is SPD-500. The retail price is $64.95 USD. SpeedoGDOS is shipping with the following fonts: Swiss 721 Roman Swiss 721 Bold Swiss 721 Italic Swiss 721 Bold Italic Dutch 801 Roman Dutch 801 Bold Dutch 801 Italic Dutch 801 Bold Italic Cooper Black VAG Rounded Park Avenue More Wingbats Monospace 821 Symbol Monospace Authorized Atari Dealers can place their orders through Atari. Dealers can also place their orders through Pacific Software. -Bill Rehbock, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 185 Tue Jun 01, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:32 EDT Bob, Why aren't we surprised you use Atari Works? ;^) I plan to get it, but I expect to continue to use Wordflair II and Calligrapher for their unique capabilities, as well. We'll have to keep the original GDOS around for the older programs that use it, won't we? I'm sure some won't work with Speedo GDOS. Hope I'm wrong! Sounds like a nice starter selection of fonts. Ken Van ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 186 Tue Jun 01, 1993 P.NEREO [Philip] at 16:02 EDT More on Speedo and SBPro (longer message in SBPro topic) Monospace 821 font is not necessary to get proper size system font in viewing and printing forms in graphic mode. What IS necessary is leaving out Zurich - condensed and bold. Apparently they interfere in some way with the system font used to display data in forms, resulting in oversize letters. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 187 Tue Jun 01, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 22:33 EDT Bob, Thanks for the explanation about font caching. I was wrong to state that previous versions of GDOS kept all of the fonts in memory. My point is that font caching will not be faster than retaining the fonts in memory. It will, however, be a more efficient use of memory. You said to Mayer: >I'm sure it will be neat to see the Falcon030 version of >Warp 9 when it is ready. Any ideas on how long that will take? I don't think Mayer has any idea how long it will take. I can't give you an accurate estimate either. Charles will be doing a lot of touring this summer and may not be able to spend the kind of time on it that's needed. John P.S. I really am sorry for my comment a while back about the Falcon taking a long time to bring to market. I hope you can accept my apology and give it a rest now. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 188 Wed Jun 02, 1993 ATARIAUSTRIA [J.Widi] at 17:09 EDT John, Bob, thanks for straightening out my comment about GDOS speed. Speedo still has some additional advantages because it does not slow down the entire system as noticeable as older GDOS versions did. -Johannes ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 189 Thu Jun 03, 1993 K.BROOKS1 [New Horizon] at 01:31 EDT Au contraire, dealers who have not been 'authorized' cannot buy anything from Pacific anymore. We got the word a couple of weeks ago that unless Pacific is notified by K-Sound in Montreal that we are an authorized dealer, we can't order Atari stuff from them. So much for servicing our existing client base. po'd in Canada. Keith New Horizon ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 190 Thu Jun 03, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 16:57 EDT John, I'm sorry if it looks like I was PO'ed...I'm really not. I can see that it might have looked that way to you, though. We all seem to be taking everything said online a little too literally in my opinion. Of course Charles is a better judge of when Warp 9 might be ready than one of your customers. That's self-evident. I don't "hang-out" in your topics, and simply thought the customer might have an indication of what the schedule was, or if there was one. That's all, honest. I hope that Charlie takes along a Stacy and finds some time to do some coding while he's on the road. I miss Warp 9 in my systems, too. Ken, :) You got me! Actually, I haven't used anything other than Speedo in quite awhile. I've mostly used Works, Word Flair II, Touch Up, and Easy Draw. For those applications, Speedo is fine. The only product I can think of off the top of my head that will have problems is Publisher ST 2. It will not support Speedo, and will abort. So if you use that product, you're right...you will need to have FontGDOS or G+Plus around. :) best regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 191 Thu Jun 03, 1993 PMC.INC at 23:14 EDT Keith, we can't get you a lot of new titles, but if you can use recycled (used) titles then get in touch with us. We offer dealer discounts, etc. oscar PS: Phone number is 206-399-8700 ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 192 Fri Jun 04, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 04:22 EDT Bob, Thanks for your concern about Warp 9. Unfortunately Charles had to sell his Stacy a while back (it's been a rough year for us) so he won't be working on it while he's away. The Falcon version of Warp 9 is mostly finished, but it's still not compatible with SpeedoGDOS. Maybe we'll release the current version without Speedo compatibility so that Falcon owners can at least use it. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 193 Mon Jun 07, 1993 JRH [Roger] at 21:47 EDT I have just received SpeedoGDOS and installed it on my system. Now, of course, there are a few things to iron out. First question is what sets the order in which the fonts are loaded? Some applications like EasyDraw and SuperBase only recognize a limited number of them. I have tried a couple different things to load them in a different order, but without luck. Philip [P.NEREO], you mentioned putting the monospaced font first. How did you do it? Next is the current conflict with Warp 9. Which features need to be disabled at the moment? Is it just the screen acceleration, or is there more? And is it only a problem if trying to print? I seem to be able to use the two together just fine (except with EasyDraw) unless I have printed out a file, then the system bombs when I exit the program. Next thing is EasyDraw. I vaguely remember seeing a comment about width tables needing to be on. Can they be selectively set on for just EasyDraw, or is it a always ON or OFF situation? Any reason not to leave them on all the time (such as system performance)? Last question is whether there is, or will be soon, a SpeedoGDOS printer driver for the HP LaserJet 4? Speedo is great, and so is the LJ4. They would be unbeatable together! Thanks to all for any info you can provide. Roger ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 194 Mon Jun 07, 1993 A.MASON4 [Anna] at 22:22 EDT Hi Robert, I just returned from vacation and evidently I've missed something in the interim . I wasn't aware that COMPO was selling SPEEDO GDOS. Can you please give me some information about it (i.e. does it work with That's Write 2; how much, what fonts, if any are included, etc.) Thanks! Anna ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 195 Tue Jun 08, 1993 MIKE-ALLEN [NM~SysOp] at 02:07 EDT Roger, I believe that Speedo loads by alphabetical order of font FILE names. .XIC Print also only recognizes a limited number of fonts in its font selecor. They seem to be the first fonts by file name. A easy solution is to use the OUTLINE acc and deselect those fonts you don't want to use in the particular program. I believe that EasyDraw (I don't have it) requires the width tables to be on. You will probably have to create width tables for those fonts you use in EasyDraw - again easy to do using the OUTLINE acc. Mike Allen ST HelpDesk~SysOp ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 196 Tue Jun 08, 1993 COMPO at 04:11 EDT Roger - I believe that fonts are loaded in the order that they're listed in the EXTEND.SYS file... if you want them loaded in a particular order it would probably be easiest to remove all fonts (with the OUTLINE accessory) and add them back one at a time as you'd like. Also, a program may sort fonts within that program by name or font ID, so the important thing is, if you want a particular set of six fonts loaded first, install them first (or manually list them first in the EXTEND.SYS). You'll want to create widthtables (and activate them) when using SpeedoGDOS with Easy Draw, but don't sweat it - you won't take a performance penalty in other programs or anything with widthtables active. It looks very good that there WILL be a 600dpi Laserjet 4 driver for SpeedoGDOS. Not sure who'll do it first at this point, since COMPO and other developers are working on SpeedoGDOS drivers (as well as Atari, of course). Anna - We are selling a nice package called Speedo Starter Kit. It contains the basic SpeedoGDOS (from Atari) and 20 Bitstream Speedo typefaces. We have four other typeface packs available, as well as individual faces from the Bitstream Typeface Library. Anyway, it goes for 60 clams (or $59.95). There's a blurb in the file Library that lists the names of the includes fonts. I can also send you font examples for both Speedo Starter Kit and the various font packs, if you'd like. Although SpeedoGDOS and That's Write 2 peacefully coexist, they do nothing for each other. The next upgrade to That's Write will use Speedo fonts, but not SpeedoGDOS (giving us a great amount of flexibility). Even in that case, the fact that That's Write is doing its own scaling and output is transparent - both programs can share the same font files and directories, and don't really care if the other is loaded. Robert ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 197 Tue Jun 08, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 20:33 EDT I just checked with Mike Fulton, and he says that the fonts are loaded in the order of their ID number, not according to their place in the extend.sys or assign.sys So, if your application only supports five fonts, then select the fonts that you want to use before launching the application, and then startup your program. regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 198 Wed Jun 09, 1993 P.NEREO [Philip] at 02:01 EDT Roger - I put a longer message in the Superbase topic outlining my expereiences with Speedo and SBPro. SB does not fill its 5 font slots by taking them in the order they are loaded. It looks for fonts labelled Swiss first, then Dutch, then you have to experiment. Some it didn't recognize, others it did. But if you have 4 different Swiss fonts loaded, they'll fill up the four slots (after system font which is always #1). The monospaced font does NOT need to be loaded; I was mistaken. The problem I was having (way oversized system font in forms on screen and printed out), dissappeared when I added 6 & 8 pt. fonts to the default 10 pt. size for Zurich condensed and Bold condensed (included in the Compo package). Even though these two were not one of the 4 loaded by SB, they apparently interfered somehow with the proper scaling of the system font. Where you can see which fonts SB is loading, is in the font drop down menu of the SB Forms editor. Finally, the only way you could get Monospaced to be first, (although you don't need it at all), would probably be to only load that one font. Certainly couldn't have any Swiss or Dutch fonts, cause SB always puts them first. Hope this helps some. Speedo was worth the wait! Great program, and faster output than FSM, with Wordflair for instance, noticably faster printing - like half the time. Warp 9 - just click off the "x" in the screen accelerator box. Seems mostly to be a problem printing only. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 199 Wed Jun 09, 1993 MIKE-ALLEN [NM~SysOp] at 04:54 EDT Speedo loads fonts by file-name order. (I guess this is the same as ID) If you check the fonts loaded in an app that has a limited # of fonts in its selector you will find that it loaded the lowest fonts by font file name. Speedo fonts BX000001.SPD through BX000010.SPD are all Swiss 721 fonts. BX000011.SPD through BX000014.SPD are Dutch 801. BX000015.SPD through BX000018.SPD are Zapf Humanist 601. You can look at a Speedo font with a sector editor and the name of the font is near the begining of the file. Hope this helps eliminate some of the confusion. Mike Allen ST HelpDesk~SysOp ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 200 Wed Jun 09, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 12:17 EDT Those having problems with Warp 9 and printing with SpeedoGDOS, have you tried using one of the older GDOS drivers? It may be as simple a problem as that. We've had conflicts with a couple of our programs with all Atari printer drivers released since FONTGDOS and we haven't been able to figure out what's causing it. This happens with G+Plus and Calligrapher and the solution has been to revert to an earlier printer driver. Perhaps the same conflict exists with Warp 9. We should be getting SpeedoGDOS any day now and we'll be able to test this stuff for ourselves. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 201 Wed Jun 09, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 13:01 EDT I don't think that older GDOS drivers will work with SpeedoGDOS. ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 202 Wed Jun 09, 1993 AEO.7 [Gregg] at 21:53 EDT Speaking of Speedo and EasyDraw.... While EZDraw loads and displays GREAT on a Speedo-based Falcon (much faster than any ST/STe), I've not been able to get it to save a file... I get a message about 'can't find Meta.SYS'.... Now then, Meta.Sys is in the Driver folder on Drive C and EasyDraw is able to access and use the various Speedo fonts with no other actions needed except for loading EasyDraw to the drive. So what's the story with this meta.sys problem? I hadn't noticed it before I tried to change the colors (in 256 color mode) of a file's display and then save it. By the way, text in a non 'width table' modified EZDraw is VERY Slow.... about on par (or a touch below) a very old TOS 1.0 520 system. Gregg ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 203 Thu Jun 10, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:05 EDT Mike, It's even easier to look through the Typeface Definition File that accompanies a Speedo font, since it's in English and reads like a little DAT file. Everything about the font is there. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 35 Message 204 Thu Jun 10, 1993 K.VANDELLEN [Ken Van] at 07:54 EDT John, I believe you monitor the STraight FAX topic. Just today there was a message from Charles explaining that it's important to use the right driver with GDOS, FONTGDOS, FSMGDOS, and SpeedoGDOS. (He says there are three different ones, the FONTGDOS and FSMGDOS ones are the same.) Funny that disregarding that advice gives better results. Ken Van Dellen d8^) ------------