[haiku] Re: haiku Digest V9 #266
- From: Nicholas Blachford <nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 00:42:44 +0000
PulkoMandy wrote:
What about Amiga screens ? of course it is quite outdated by now,
but I find the ability to have multiple screens visible at the same
time quite useful sometimes.
It looks like this :
http://xwinman.org/screenshots/amiwm-matt.gif
Basically each screen (or workspace) has a bar at the top, and yo
ucan drag it down to see the screen that's below. Screens can still
have different resolutions, so the monitor is switched to the
topmost screen's resolution and you can have a black border on the
right side if the resolution of the other screen is smaller - or if
it's bigger, a part of it will be out of view. The little button at
the right of the bar allows you to send the screen under the other
one. You can also use only this button to cycle between screens
while they use the full space.
The Amiga screens were a side effect of the original Amiga hardware
that could switch horizontal resolution every line. This meant you
could have different resolution screens displayed at once.
You can use the button to switch between screen but there are also
little apps that give you a menu to directly select the screen instead
of clicking through them all. I think they might even have something
like Expose nowadays.
The Amiga itself lost this ability when it switched away from custom
chips but it was eventually added back to AmigaOS and MoprhOS in
software. IIRC the MorphOS version also allows you to move the front
scree sideways as well.
You could also simulate this feature using the GPU, each screen would
be a texture and would be scaled appropriately.
This ability meant Amiga apps tended to open on their own screen
rather than on the desktop, and therefore got the full screen every
time, on most other OSs the apps open on the desktop. It was a system
that worked very well, I was a very happy Amiga user for 11 years.
Workspaces do much the same job but are placed side by side instead of
on top of one another. They're really just two different ways of
looking at the same thing.
BTW no idea should be considered "outdated", it is either useful or it
is not. The age of the idea is irrelevant.
--
Nicholas Blachford
nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.blachford.info
"You'll be a dentist - You have a talent for causing things pain!
Son, be a dentist - People will pay you to be inhumane! "
- Little Shop of Horrors.
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