This must be really impressive,
> I have put together several "desktop themes" with background wallpaper,
> icons, etc that work just like a Windoze desktop, click on an icon and
> launch my text editor, budget spread sheet, get directories, etc, etc.
> Also several other non-themed pages with beautiful graphics, icons etc.
> People, especially those who have never seen anything but Windoze are
> really amazed that this can be done in DOS.
Well, impressive it must be at least for the illiterate.
I wonder how many different icon-hieroglyphes could be done and
assembled - well decorated - on a screenful ?
With my first 'puter, which showed 8 lines of 40 so-called characters
on its screen, and had in all just under 32 KB (kilobyte, that is) of
memory to work with, the use of eight basic hieroglyphs - those things
called "letters" - of the Latin type ASCII alphabet (which has only 26
of these base-icons) would allow displaying about 40 various functions
to launch from the sreen display at any one time; for each of these
clickable surface areas (they used to be called "names", for files or
programs) I would have a choice of 26^8 variations (i.e., only somewhat
over 21 thousand million). As I didn't want to have too many confusing
things at once displayed, I usually had the number of different icons
reduced to 32 on each screen, with one icon then having the form of
"MORE" which, clicked upon, would show another screen page with 32
different icons, and so forth. One, for instance, would show the
arrangement "ADDRESS" and if clicked, would show addresses, another
would be simply "WRITE", and since I did have the ability to do that
at the time, I could agitate a thing called keyboard, forming all
sorts of new icons - called "words" - into long chains (phrases,
sentences). Still another icon would show as "PRINT", and the printer
would print out my arrangement of lines of simple icons, (most)
other people would be able to "read", and perhaps understand, the
meaning of what was printed there.
That wasn't much more than ten years ago. How time goes by !
But then, this little 'puter couldn't show the nice little flowers
around the windows, it displayed black on white, and neither could it
play the clip with aunt Annie and her awful mongrel jumping and barking.
// Heimo Claasen // <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> // Brussels 1999-05-24
HomePage of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.inti.be/hammer
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