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From: stigvi@Lise.Unit.NO (Stig Vidar Hovland)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Gemini 1.2
Message-ID: <1991Mar10.124912.19073@ugle.unit.no>
Date: 10 Mar 91 12:49:12 GMT
Sender: news@ugle.unit.no
Reply-To: stigvi@Lise.Unit.NO (Stig Vidar Hovland)
Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology
Lines: 92

I have just uploaded Gemini 1.2 to atari.archive.umich.edu. 
Please note that this program is not public domain, but shareware. 
The authors ask for as little as DM50, which they really deserves. 
Personally I think this must be the best replacement desktop 
which is available. It has a very good CLI, can run accessories 
directly from the desktop and have the ability to communicate with 
accessories if they follow certain protocols.


Changes in GEMINI Version 1.2 from Version 1.1
----------------------------------------------

Copyright (C) 1990 by Gereon Steffens & Stefan Eising

GEMINI is a shareware program by

Gereon Steffens                       Stefan Eissing
Elsterweg 8              and          Dorfbauernschaft 7
D-5000 Kln 90                        D-4419 Laer-Holthausen
Germany                               Germany
Mailbox: MAUS Kln 2, +49 2203 12400  Mailbox: MAUS Steinfurt, +49 2572 88881

English version of docs by Ton van Overbeek, TVOVERBE@ESTEC.BITNET

What's new? For all users here a short summary of the most important changes
in Version 1.2 compared with 1.1 (For details on some of the points see
the documentation).

a) Mupfel
   - new environment variable GEMSUFFIX; contains extensions for
     GEM programs.
   - overlay start mode for memory hungry programs.
   - chmod treats fastload and TT bits.
   - new commands prtconf, rsconf, format, kclick and kbrate.
   - history can be saved.
   - improved handling of stderr and input/output redirection.
   - long (more understandable) option names in the commands.

b) Venus
   - overlay start mode for memory hungry programs.
   - an installed application can handle more than one file type.
   - desktop cleanup
   - formatting diskettes is possible
   - several icon sizes are possible
   - xAcc protocol step 0
   - own protocol between Venus and accessories (-> TreeView)
   - new font selector and improved dialogues for icon rules and
     installed applications
   - keyboard shortcuts for objects on the background
   - colored icons
   - text line under icons has variable width
  
c) Gemini
   - dragging of objects in the console window is possible
   - the mouse is also active in the console window
   - text in the console window can be selected with the mouse
   - fuller for the console window

d) In all programs fantastillions of errors have been removed (and
   hopefully only a few new ones added!).
   Especially the handling of defective diskettes by Gemini is much better...

For all those Sozobon users I have also included some Sozobon stuff
from the docs which could be of some interest.

- The public domain Sozobon C compiler has an error which in connection with
  the extended argument passing methods leads to system crashes. The error
  is in the Sozobon startup code and is therefore in all programs compiled
  with Sozobon. If you compile programs with Sozobon yourself then it is
  quite easy to fix this bug.
  The following changes are necessary in the source of the memcpy routine:

17a18,27
>     move.l    a0,d0
>     btst    #0,d0        ; odd alignment? sorry, it has to be move.b
>     beq    lmcp0_c
>     bra    lmcp0_b
> lmcp0_a:            ; O.K., this loop is not very efficient,
>     move.b    (a0)+,(a1)+    ; but at least it works
> lmcp0_b:
>     dbra    d1,lmcp0_a
>     bra    lmemcpy7
> lmcp0_c:
24c34
<     move.w    (a0)+,(a1)+    ; extra bytes copy loop
---
>     move.w    (a0)+,(a1)+    ; extra words copy loop

  Then you should recompile all Sozobon programs.


Stig Vidar Hovland - stigvi@lise.unit.no