This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (62 messages)
James, Hmm…you may well be right. But, I have had good success with the drive and MM apps, including the Mammals thing. I don't have the presidents. One thing that seems to help, and I can't explain why, is to change the /M: parameter for MSCDEX from the default 8…
Bryan, Great! I can't wait. So far, I've bought everything you folks have offered in the CD-ROM line. What's coming? A Multimedia upgrade kit? I hope so…let's get Drew excited and come up with one of those terrific price things for the Soundblaster Pro card! George
#DAK\BSR\SONY CD-Rom
Message #18533
Bryan, I'm using the DAK/BSR/SONY drive in tests of multimedia apps, and I haven't found a single area where it fails to work. It's a bit slow at times on long animations and it takes a while for .WAV files to load, but I don't have any other hardware to…
Kevin, I'll vouch for what Bryan from DAK said. When I bought my first one, it somehow came without any docs. I just plugged the board in, hooked up the cables and ran the setup program on disk 1. No problems at all! The second drive worked just as well.…
#18109-
Sony 7205 and MPC
Message #18320
The 6201 BSR/Sony/DAK drive works just fine on all the apps I've tested too. George
John, The key, perhaps, to the question posed before, is the screen blanker. I did some tests the other day on a printing routine I'm using in an app. With After Dark loaded, printing took almost three times as long as with it unloaded. Obviously, the timers in After Dark…
Don, You're absolutely right. Setting up a scaled picture box, then writing to it makes it easy to print. As long as you keep the ScaleMode the same for the box and the printer, you can basically just do a find/replace to switch from picture to print. The only place…
Ted, Well, that reset of ScaleMode to 0 may make sense for some objects, but not for the Printer. Typically, I want to set some margins with the Scale properties, but keep my own measurements that I'm using to send the text, etc, to the printer in inches, or points,…
Calling DOS!@#$%^
Message #3429
Mitchell, Wrong! Insert? Delete? I don't know how much simpler it can get, really. Combine them with a shifted key and you're home. If you want the other keystrokes, or whatever makes sense to you, most real Windows software lets you record a little tiny macro, so you can use…
Eric, Download BMPKIT over in Library 1 (New Uploads). It demos how to scale bitmaps, both to the screen and to the printer, using StretchBLT calls. George There is 1 Reply.
Keith, What seems to happen is that, since setting ScaleLeft, etc. changes the ScaleMode to 0 (USER), your careful CurrentX and CurrentY stuff doesn't necessarily work. I'm still not sure exactly what happens, and the manual isn't any help. I experimented with it for a long time, then abandoned the…
Costas, Not without help, it's not, at least for most users. George
Mitchell, Well, I don't know. In Windows apps at least, it's just as easy, really. Ctrl-Ins copies, Shift-Del cuts, and Shift-Ins inserts. That's not really too tough. George
Graeme, You have to be a bit careful with ScaleLeft and the other similar properties. If you set them at runtime, your ScaleMode reverts to the User setting. What this means is that setting any of those properties destroys your original ScaleMode settings. That's the reason for your overflow errors.…
Ethan, Aside from that, there are a lot of users who remain faithful to the old 88-key AT keyboard. You could get in real trouble by specifying a non-existant key, I would think. George
John, Since you uploaded the original file, you can delete it. However, if you delete a file, either upload your replacement with a different filename or wait a day or two before re-uploading. I've lost several files over on WINADV when trying to update a file. George There is 1…
Dennis, If that's true about the GetDeviceCaps and the PCL driver, then calling it is just about worthless. The actual unprintable area on a Series II is almost exactly .20, as measured from an actual printout which prints off the edges of both sides of the page. If accuracy is…
Keith, Isn't developing a printer-intensive application a joy? You get to give your friends with children piles and piles of scratch paper for them to draw pretty pictures on. You also get lots of time to scratch your head waiting for the printer to spew out your pages. The app…
Keith, Why not indeed? A better idea yet. I don't really use the feature much. I was just trying to answer a question….I actually looked in the Windows manual…what a shocker! George
Costas, Another check of the BMPKIT.ZIP file shows just how much that feature is needed. So far it's racing ahead in the download count. George There is 1 Reply.
Costas, I really didn't sense any disagreement here. It's a matter of priorities. I want the same things, but first I want those basic functions. I can live with the VBRUN100.DLL, but I hate having to go outside to do simple things. Anyhow….. George
Mitchell, OK, doing cut and paste from Windowed DOS apps is easy, if confusing. First you press Alt-Spacebar, then in the control menu, choose Mark. You can then use Shift-cursor keys to select. Select Edit, then copy to move the info to the Clipboard. You can also just drag the…
Jonathan, Gee, I wouldn't know about that. I do know that I avoid it. George (always seeking bugs)
Bryon, It's true that ScaleWidth/Height returns the actual printable area, but be careful with these two properties, especially if you're setting Printer.CurrentX and CurrentY. If you change these figures, you revert to the User setting for ScaleMode, and that can throw your printing off. It's OK, however, to read these…
Keith, You're right, the unprintable area, if any, is different on all printers. There are good solutions in the API, but then again, you can fake them all out by assuming a slighly larger margin in your apps. You'll print a little farther from the edge, but you'll compensate for…
Costas, I *am* patient and understanding, dammit! . It's just that I know that there was a huge push to get this program out, and I'm glad it's here. But, as I said in my message to Dennis, the things that were left out are essentials, not frills. I couldn't…
Paul… Yes! George
Dennis, I disagree, as you might expect. OK, let's take a scenario. Say I'm producing a program which designs display advertisements for graphic designers. I send the program, but tell my users it won't print the clip art images I supply with the app. Oh…well…if you buy this add-on it'll…
Jonathan, Well, I haven't used the feature in the DOS Word 5.5 for a long time, but the last time I tried it I ended up locking the system to the hardware reset stage. George There is 1 Reply.
Jonathan, I can only think of one DOS product that had direct access to the Clipboard, and that is Word 5.5. I found it less than satisfactory, to say the least. Of course, if you're windowing DOS apps, you can use Windows to cut and paste from any of them.…
Ted, Yes, VB *is* only in version 1.0, I agree. But…I don't feel like that's an excuse for the lack of some pretty critical functions. I know I've mentioned the graphics printing tools. That one's my biggest complaint, even after it's been solved now. I simply can't understand releasing a…
Costas, OK, I can buy what you're saying about including API information with the VB package. That'd be OK with me. Still, the analogy with INTERRUPT in QB is apt, I think. In QB, the possibility of calling all those nifty interrupt functions was there in the manual…what was missing…
John, I know I'm getting a reputation on this forum as a curmudgeon, insisting that VB alone should offer the basic functions the user needs. I'm certainly not opposed to third-party libraries at all…actually I wish I was a good enough programmer to produce some of my own. I'm just…
Mark, Thanks. That's not too bad at all, those file sizes. I think I could live with that. I'll take a look at your demos. George There is 1 Reply.
Costas, You're absolutely right in everything you say. I'm sure that standard API calls will survive the version change. MS wouldn't dare change the basics. As I have said before, I love this environment. And you're right, stuff like making some calls internal would just be go-betweens, but isn't that…
Mark, How big is the .DLL you have to distribute with programs that use your library? Both in raw form and ZIPped? George
Dennis, That's been my experience as well. The 0& is essential. George
Ted, I'm sure you're probably right about the API calls question, but there are precedents for my concern. An app I wrote in QuickBASIC about a year ago uses a large number of documented INTERRUPT calls. That application now does not work with DOS 5.0. I'm still working on solving…
Jonathan, I hadn't though of that, actually. Hmmm. How about using a batch file and the IF EXIST command, with a parameter the user must enter to identify their Windows directory. You could copy or expand VBRUN100.DLL to the appropriate directory, or even to the root, since that's always in…
Jonathan, That sounds like exactly what's needed for installation. You're right about the VBRUN100.DLL problem, however. Is there a way to determine the path to the Windows 3.0 directory? If so, you could simply check for the file's existance, then copy the library to that directory if it wasn't already…
Dennis, Familiarity is probably the problem, I suppose. Still, you have to admit that it's not as easy to make a complex API call, say to something like StretchBlt, as it is to define a property in VB. I'm getting more familiar all the time with the functions, and I…
Dennis, That sounds like a good idea to me. However, I'm not nearly competent enough around external function calls to create what you're describing. What I'd like to see someone do…and I'd pay for it…would be a generic installation program. It could read a file containing the filenames to copy…
Jonathan, Install programs, whether you write them for the DOS or Windows environments, always have some difficulties. Since users can do what they want with their systems, you can't count on anything at all being there. I confess that I would never even think of deleting Progman, just for the…
Don, Thanks. I'll take a look at it. I just took the example from the manual, then changed the DrawMode until it worked. I had no idea that setting AutoRedraw to True would shut it off. I confess to still being confused, but it does work. George
Don, IMHO, I think items like this (printing and scaling graphics) should definitely be included as internal VB commands, bigger VBRUN notwithstanding. While you're absolutely correct that it will still require similar variables, the user won't be forced to figure out the arcane way that API declarations and calls are…
Dennis, Well, I really didn't mean fool :). I'm going to test before I send any keys anywhere. Actually, the more I see, the less likely I am to write an Install program. George
Jim, Actually, I'd never assume that PROGMAN was running. Before using SendKeys, I would always run the program in question, check to make sure it was running….THEN use SendKeys. PROGMAN is always available, unless some fool deleted it after installing Norton Desktop or some other memory-hogging Windows shell program. All…
Jeffrey, Set Autoredraw to False, then your simple code will work for rubber-banding. I discovered this when I had rubber-banding working in my application. When I set AutoRedraw to true, I suddenly lost the ability to rubberband. You could set it false in the MouseDown event, then set it back…
Graham, Right you are about NewPage. The reason is that your handy old windows is busy building a pretty 300 DPI picture of your page to send to the printer. This is especially true if you're using ATM or another scaler. The answer? There isn't one. George
OOPS! My mistake. The Shift key is a lousy choice, as I found out today. But you know what works? {SCROLLLOCK}. Notice that there are three Ls, not the two shown in the Language Reference. George
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