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From: gl8f@astsun9.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: How do you create non-scrolling screen regions?
Message-ID: <1990Mar8.041134.25210@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 8 Mar 90 04:11:34 GMT
References: <2344@ultb.isc.rit.edu>
Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Reply-To: gl8f@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Organization: Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Lines: 28

In article <2344@ultb.isc.rit.edu> ajy2208@ultb.isc.rit.edu (A.J. Yarusso) writes:
>Hi everyone, 
>
>  I need to know how to create region(s) on the screen that are
>independent from normal screen i/o (mainly, scrolling..).  Most terminal
>programs have a line or two somewhere on the screen that doesn't scroll.
>Usually these are status displays to show useful information (baud rate,
>system connected to, various toggles, etc..).  

If you want to do this in a totally general fashion (i.e. do more than
just keep N lines at the bottom of the screen from scrolling) you need
to use the vdi functions to write on the screen, and use blitting
operations to scroll sections of the screen. This is a lot more
complex than getting to treat the screen as an almost-dumb terminal,
but sometimes it's worth it.

If you want to make this go very fast, you should be sure you avoid
clipping, blit to byte boundaries, and use a software accellerator
such as TurboST or Quick ST.

>  I've searched my wonderful MWC manual, but there's no mention on how
>to create something to this effect.

The stuff I talked about above is in your MWC manual. It's not the
easiest way to do it, but it's the most general one.

Greg Lindahl
gl8f@virginia.edu                                  Astrophysicists for Choice.