Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!gumby!obryan
From: obryan@gumby.cc.wmich.edu (Mark O'Bryan)
Subject: Re: FORMDIAL.PRG
Message-ID: <1990Feb3.070418.13493@gumby.cc.wmich.edu>
Organization: Western Michigan University
References: <6157@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 90 07:04:18 GMT

In article <6157@eagle.wesleyan.edu> ncastellano@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:
>
> What does the program FORMDIAL from the archives do?  The index says it speeds
> up dialog boxes, but I got it and unarchived it, and it contains no
> documentation, and doesn't seem to affect system performance, and doesn't
> display any messages or anything, just exits.  Programs like that make me
> nervous.

I agree that the documentation for FormDial is minimal, or non-existent.
Which is unfortunate, since it's an interesting idea.  What it does is to
speed up screen redraws (make them instaneously, actually) after you CLOSE
a dialog box.  It does this by reserving a 32 kB chunk of memory (and you
thought it took only 500 bytes!), where it saves a portion of the screen
during a formdial (reserve, ...) call which preceeds a dialog box draw.
Then it intercepts the formdial (free,...) call and blits the image back
when the dialog exits, avoiding the redraw.

The reason it displays no messages is that it's intended to be run from the
AUTO folder.  If you don't know that, I can see why you'd be nervous.  Ac-
tually, you should be nervous of *any* program of doubtful parentage, with
no documentation!

If your dialogs commonly cover fairly small, or simple areas, you may not
notice the speedup very much.  If they tend to cover very large, or complex
areas that takes lots of time to redraw, you will notice it.  But you might
not attribute it to FormDial, unless you know that is what it's for.

Most programs work OK with FormDial, but some don't and will hang, probably
because they got sloppy and don't balance their calls to formdial properly
(just my guess).  Whether it's worthwhile for you will depend on how tight
memory space is, and if you ever run ill-behaved programs that cause it
to hang.

-- 
Mark T. O'Bryan                 Internet:  obryan@gumby.cc.wmich.edu
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI  49008