Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!milton!max!scott
From: scott@max.u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Geos Questions
Message-ID: <10576@max.u.washington.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 21:57:41 GMT
Article-I.D.: max.10576
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle WA
Lines: 63

> From: gt4662b@prism.gatech.EDU (BRANHAM,JOSEPH FRANKLIN)
> Date: 17 Nov 89 03:54:03 GMT
> Keywords: light_pen, Geos
> Lines: 17
>
> I've got two questions concerning Geos:
>
> 1) Can anyone give me a recommendation for GeoPublish. I can imagine
>         that its not as complete a program as, say Pagemaker, but what
>         can it do.
 
Here is description about GeoPublish as written in an ad:
GeoPublish is a full featured desktop publishing package. GeoPublish
actually does things that some expensive Macintosh programs don't.
Resize text, change fonts, and insert or delete graphics anywhere on
the page. A scaling tool lets you shrink or enlarge you artwork. You
can even place text over graphics (or vice-versa). Letting you
integrate text and graphics from the entire GEOS family of programs
is a key feature of geoPublish. Create great looking documents that
combines text, graphics, tables, charts, etc.
 
To run GeoPublish you need to have the GEOS operating system,
which is sold separately. The operating system comes in the
GEOS 2.0 package. This package is a great buy in itself
because it come with number of excellent application programs
like GeoWrite, GeoPaint, GeoSpellCheker, TextGrabber, Calculator, etc....and
other assortments of files like 25 or so printer drivers,
number of input drivers, etc... beside the GEOS operating system.
 
> 2) My girlfriend has been staring intently at a lightpen. What she's
>         hoping is that there is a lightpen driver for Geos available.
>         Is there one? Where can I get it.
 
Yes, and it comes in the GEOS 2.0 package, and other input drivers
that it comes, beside the lightpen driver, are mouse, joystick,
and koalapad.
In a previous post, some one mentioned that using a lightpen
with GEOS was kind of useless because the pointer that follows
the lightpen is very jerky, especially horizontally. Well, the
cause of this jerkiness might be due to the screen display
and not due to the computer. A lightpen work by reading the raster
tracing of the screen as it refreshes the screen every 1/60th of
a second. When a TV is used as the screen display, since it
has a tunner, the display is prone to interferance from outside
sources, thus preventing a clear display signal from the computer,
which inturn might affect the proper reading of the raster by
the light pen. So perhaps using a Monitor (an 80 columns monitor
would be nice) would solve the problem. And also, cleaning the
screen window before using the lightpen would also be of help.
Remember the light pen is reading the necessary information
from the screen, and a dirty screen clearly will inhibit a
"clean" reading  :) , besides when was the last time you cleaned
your screen.
Oh ya... while you are at it, clean the head of the light pen
too! It might be semi-blind.
 
> Cheers-
>
> BRANHAM,JOSEPH FRANKLIN
 
Sincerely,
Scott K. Stephen