ChangeLog for NewPop by Loren J. Rittle Copyright © 1991 Loren J. Rittle LJR added the titlebar clock sometime in 1988 or early 1989. LJR added the Q*X pattern sometime in 1988 or early 1989. LJR added the instant- and defeat-blanking in 1988 or early 1989. EAH and LJR added color to the Q*X sometime in late 1989. EAH and LJR added the titlebar PrefMon around 1/18/90. LJR improved the titlebar PrefMon on 2/8/90. LJR added the titlebar disk I/O PrefMon on 2/8/90. LJR reworked the way the titlebar stuff renders into the `titlebar', now implemented with a backdrop window positioned over the titlebar on 12/20/90. LJR reworked all of newpop to be a bit more system independent on 12/30/90. LJR reworked Q*X code to spawn a new task on 1/13/91. LJR reworked parts of newpop to be a bit more explicit in declaring which registers arguments *MUST* be passed in (mainly for the event handler). Also switched back to '-b1' and we now use __saveds on functions that need to load A4. This saves a few hundred bytes. 1/18/91. LJR got rid of all _enforcer_ hits NewPop was causing. The strange thing is that they were all happening in ROM code because my message ports had no names and had not been added to the system's port list. I now name and add to the system's list all message ports. Not only was this a bitch to track down, but it should also be legal (according to AutoDocs, etc)! 1/27/91 LJR recoded the entire thing to allow dynamic (at startup time) configuration instead of hardcoded compile time configuration. This added many, many bytes! Why did I do it? Because my public asked for it, will I ever get a pizza out of this deal? YOW 1/27/91. LJR released version 3.0 and 3.1. LJR added URC, LRC, LLC, ULC options to allow the user to decide what NewPop should do when the pointer enters the given screen corner. Also, changed the method by which a running NewPop is told to halt. 2/1/91 LJR modified the method used to shut down a running NewPop: Signal(NewPopTask, SIGBREAKF_CTRL_C) is now the way to kill it, instead of a custom message with the quit flag set. 2/1/91 LJR cleaned up one last time for first UseNet release. 3/16/91 LJR released version 3.2. LJR fixed problem that restricted NewPop from being compiled under 2.0 includes... I don't want to talk about it. :-) 4/16/91 [Remember don't use the return value from OpenWorkBench()... :-] LJR added support for using System() instead of Execute() under 2.0. This allows more info to be copied over to the new shell. Both CAW and EW asked for this. Thanks Chris and Ed. 4/16/91 LJR added silent startup mode for Chris. If `BESILENT TRUE' is in your s:.newpoprc, then NewPop will be silent when it is time to show the startup message. Error and quit messages will still be displayed. Chris will you quit bitchin' for awhile... :-) 4/16/91 LJR added support for joystick moves to disable blanking. Thanks Ed and Russ. 4/16/91 LJR released version 3.3beta1. LJR added hot key for instant- and defeat-blanking and rationalized how the POPKEY was handled. 4/17/91 LJR fixed an old kludge related to pointer blanking... We now open a screen and a window for blanking and do a SetPointer() to blank the pointer. We used to just open a screen and set the pointer sprite's colors to black, but people saw this and complained (I'm not sure if I should, but thanks Chris)! Because we now open and activate a window, the JR-Comm cursor problem should go away (Thanks Rocky). [Note: if the JR-Comm cursor problem does not go away, then it's not my problem... :-] 4/17/91 LJR released version 3.3beta2. LJR fixed a problem that occurred under 2.0 that caused screens smaller than the WBScreen size to not be instant-blankable (or defeat-blankable...). Thanks Ed. 4/18/91 LJR stopped using cback.o, because it was restricting what information could be *easily* transferred over to new shells pop'd open (Thanks Chris for tracking down this problem and solution, to be quite honest --- I've wanted to get rid of cback.o for some time and this gives me more than probable cause :-). 4/20/91 LJR removed silent startup mode, because it wasn't needed any longer for the above reason (now just say runback null: newpop)... 4/20/91 LJR released version 3.4beta. LJR added LOCK and PASSWORD options for Chris. 4/20/91 LJR looked into and fixed problems related to quitting and restarting NewPop with the SCSI monitor on. It appears that some problem developed with C= controller software and/or 2.0 software. Thanks Chris for the lead on the fix. 4/20/91 LJR released version 3.4beta2. LJR added option to allow a free memory display in titlebar (From talking done on the MicroTech BBS). It is not in it's final form, but it will give the beta testers something new to play with... 4/21/91 LJR released version 3.4beta3. LJR replaced first attempt free memory display with it's final form for this release. 4/21/91 LJR released vesion 4.0beta (decided enough new features were implemented to up the MAJOR revision number, thus it's now NewPop v4.0). LJR added new feature to allow the titlebar window to be a foreground (i.e. not a BACKDROP) window. Thanks Ken! 4/23/91 LJR added new feature to allow wimps to be able to read the titlebar clock. Thanks Ken! 4/23/91 LJR fixed a bug that caused NewPop to hang if it could not open the named font. (I'm not sure if this is related to what you had problems with, but it got me looking at that part of code, so...) Thanks Thomas. 4/24/91 LJR released vesion 4.0beta2. LJR fixed a bug that causes NewPop to crash if NO mouse moves occurred before the TIMEOUT occurred. NewPop would NOT blank the screen and eat about ~30KB of chip ram a second until it hit 0. Then any other activity that needed chip ram would crash the machine, not a pretty sight. Thanks Aris. 4/26/91 LJR changed Forbid()/look at IntuitionBase/Permit() to the correct lock = LockIBase (0)/look at IntuitionBase/UnlockIBase(lock) sequence. Thanks Chris. 4/26/91 LJR went back to code that opens a blanker screen of (NormalDisplayColumns, NormalDisplayRows) size instead of the top screen size. Thanks for the talk Chris. 4/26/91 LJR released vesion 4.0 to the public. 4/26/91 LJR replaced standard startup code with Eddy Carroll's small.a. 5/10/91 LJR fixed bugs that cause TIMEOUT == 0 to cause instant blanking! The docs claimed that TIMEOUT == 0 should disable the timed blanking feature. Thanks Dan. 5/23/91 Still being looking into: /* LJR added a new option (HIDEWBINFO) that allows one to specify that the space after `Workbench Screen' up to the start of the titlebar monitors should always be covered by the titlebar window, thus hiding those nasty WB memory free statements. 4/21/91 Not yet implemented! */ Things that will not be added soon (note I have changed my mind... DMouse does all this stuff, so why should NewPop. Get DMouse v1.20 if you want this type of functionality and turn off the DMouse screen blanker when used with NewPop. Really, NewPop and DMouse work great together!): LJR looked into performing pointer blanking when ones starts to type (or after n seconds) (Ed). 4/16/91 LJR looked into performing automatic activation of windows and screen flipping ala DMouse and QMouse (Ed). 4/16/91