QuickST 0.8 documentation
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by Darek Mihocka   12/27/88

QuickST is a text output accelerator that allows any ST without a blitter
to print text as quickly as if it had a blitter chip. It can be installed
either as a desk accessory (QuickST.ACC) or activated by running it either
from the desktop or the AUTO folder (QuickST.PRG). Steps to speed up some
GEM functions are being taken and may be present in future versions.

The desk accessory version, when selected from the menu bar, will put up
an alert box with 3 options: On, Off, and Info. QuickST is on by default,
and so the Off button will be hilited as the default selection. Similarly
when QuickST is turned off, the On button will be selected as the default
selection. This allows you to quickly toggle the mode of QuickST by pressing
the RETURN key when that alert box appears.

The only reason you'd want to turn QuickST off is if it conflicts with
some piece of software, and in this buggy beta version, you will probably
want to do that a few times! Note that QuickST.PRG can't be turned off.

This version supports most of the common VT52 commands, so it should work
fine with most ST bulletin boards. It also supports the 48 row mode found
in FLASH and some editors.

To date, it has not been thouroughly tested on all possible ST setups. The
development machine is a monochrome 1040ST with the 1987 TOS, but I have no
reason to believe that it wouldn't work on a 520 or Mega 4, old or new TOS.

I have primarily tested it in monochrome, although medium resolution text
should work also. Low resolution text is not supported at the moment.

What I require is for some other ST users to try out this program, and tell
me if it works on their systems or not. Don't worry about some of the bugs,
like cursors not getting erased properly. What I need to know is that it
works on all STs, regardless of memory size or TOS version, and whether
it conflicts with any software. I also want to know how much of a speed
increase there is, since the acceleration factor won't be the same from
machine to machine.

To test it do the following: if you have the blitter chip or Turbo ST, turn
them off. Select a text file, perhaps about 30-50K in length, and time how
long it takes to view it from the desktop, starting from the moment the
screen clears to when the desktop reappears again. This should be on the
order of a minute or so for regular TOS. Now repeat this procedure with
the blitter chip activated (if applicable), with Turbo ST activated (if
applicable), and with QuickST activated. It shouldn't make a difference
whether you use the accessory version of the standalone program version.

When you have the times collected, send me email with the information, and
be sure to include your ST's model, memory size, TOS version, the length
of the text file you tested, and some characteristics of the file, such as
"lots of spaces", "long lines of text", "short lines of text", many blank
lines", etc. Please test it with several files if possible.

My email ID's are as follows:

BIX: DAREKM
Compuserve: 73657,2714
Delphi: DAREKM
Genie: DAREKM

Thanks for your time, and I hope to have a fully working program available
for you soon. Unfortunately, work on the ST Xformer has taken up most of my
time recently, but it was time for a break. Future versions of QuickST will
be released in the Atari ST download sections of the above networks.

- Darek Mihocka