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From: to_stdnet@stag.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: That little black line
Message-ID: <809@stag.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 89 16:49:31 GMT
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From: stag!thelake!steve@bungia.mn.org (Steve Yelvington)

I have a minor visual neatnss problem in the application I'm working on (a
point-and-click shell for a group of .TTP programs).

When the Desktop launches a .PRG application, it draws a little black line
between the menu bar region of the screen and the working region. The line
does not appear to "belong" to either the desk workspace or the menu bar,
for reasons that become apparent below:

When my GEM shell execs a .TTP program, I erase the menu bar, clear the
screen and home the vt52 cursor so that the .TTP program can write
anywhere it wants. 

When it returns, I want to put things back the way they were. I restore
the menu bar, then clean up the desk area by drawing a solid green G_BOX
object clipped to the size of the Desktop's work window, like so:

	#define DESKTOP 0	

	int x,y,w,h;
	/* first, we get the dimensions of the full GEM Desktop 	*/
	wind_get(DESKTOP, WF_FULLXYWH, &x, &y, &w, &h);
	/* then we draw our own desk surface, clipping appropriately 	*/
	objc_draw(mydesk, ROOT, 0, x,y,w,h);	

Everything looks fine except that I've lost that little black line between
the menu bar and the big green playing field. This looks messy, and it
looks even messier when I point into the menu bar, because the AES redraws
the portions of the missing bar that are disturbed by the drop-down menus.
(My program is not the only one in which I have seen this phenomenon.)

Is there a way to redraw that little black line without getting into the
VDI?

Another question:

I don't have a monochrome monitor, so I don't know the effect of using a
solid (value of 7) GREEN to redraw the desk area. I've read that GEM maps
all nonwhite values to black. Since the monochrome GEM Desktop is
halftoned, I have to assume that either (a) GEM does not really map all
nonwhite values to black, or (b) the Desktop checks to see if it's using a
monochrome monitor, and if so, adjusts its background to a halftone.

Which is it?



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