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From: jln@acns.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Hilarious Disinfectant 2.0
Message-ID: <10002@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 22 Jul 90 17:24:59 GMT
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References:<1990Jul21.112742.18685@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu> <1990Jul21.182115.2075@d.cs.okstate.edu>

I always have one joke and one puzzle in each release of Disinfectant.  I 
didn't plan it this way, but that's the way it has turned out.

The joke has always been the same - try disinfecting a CD ROM and 
Disinfectant will eject it and ask you to "unlock and reinsert" it.  I 
enjoy visualizing some poor slob looking for the write-protect tab on his 
caddy :-)

The puzzle in the 1.x versions was how to get the about box.  This was 
mentioned in the manual very briefly, but most people don't read manuals, 
so most people weren't even aware that there was one.  It was the same as 
the 2.0 version, but without the sound.

The 2.0 puzzle is how to get the entire Sousa "Liberty Bell" march played. 
The entire march is there, and I know of three essentially different ways 
to get the entire thing played.  One poster has already revealed one of 
the ways.  Hint:  All three ways involve drastically slowing down the 
animation, so that the entire tune gets played before the foot hits the 
virus names.

The Sousa march is definitely screwed up on the IIfx.  It's as if there 
were extra rests inserted randomly in the tune.  I built a test program 
which just plays the tune, and it screws up in the same way, again ONLY on 
the IIfx.  I've tried to figure out what's going on without success.  I 
think I'll send my test program in to Apple DTS and see what they have to 
say.

I hope to do some work later today improving the about box.  The animation 
is properly synched with the vertical retrace interrupt on the classic Mac 
models, but not on the color QuickDraw models - I think I've finally 
unraveled enough of the mysteries of color QuickDraw to fix that now.  
This ought to get rid of some of the annoying "flicker" effect.  I also 
have an idea to improve (speed up) the squishing of the virus names on 
slower Mac models.

Few people know that the main function of Disinfectant is displaying the 
about box - killing viruses is just a side-effect :-)  I'm very happy to 
see that USENET readers have realized this, judging from the volume of 
postings.

Seriously, the programming for the about box was some of the more 
interesting and difficult work I did in Disinfectant.  Making it non-modal 
was non-trivial.  Handling update events in an animated window is not easy.

John Norstad
Academic Computing and Network Services
Northwestern University
jln@acns.nwu.edu