Re: [MiNT] TosWin2 "Open console...at output"

[Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi>]

Hi,

On keskiviikko 02 tammikuu 2013, Vincent Rivière wrote:
> The Console is a special window where the text output from .prg goes.
> Theoretically, this should not happen, because if a program uses text
> output, it should be renamed .tos or .ttp. Exceptions are programs like
> Qextract: graphical front-ends (.prg) for command-line tools (.ttp)
> which produce text output.

.tos and .ttp are text-only programs.  .prg, .app and .gtp are something
that uses VDI/AES (.gtp is GEM version of .ttp).

I think main reason why VDI/AES programs do console output is debugging,
printf() is much more convenient than having debug output window.


> With a multitasking environment such as FreeMiNT+XaAES, sending text to
> the console is not a good thing. Even with FreeMiNT, the default console
> is handled by the BIOS in full screen. With standard hardware, the VDI
> and the BIOS console share the same screen memory. When both are used at
> the same time, this produces screen corruption (text printed over
> graphics, etc.).  With special VDI drivers (ARAnyM+fVDI, maybe some
> graphics cards...), the BIOS console output is not displayed at all.
> This is why TosWin2 has the Console window. Combined to xconout2.xdd
> support, it allows to redirect the text sent to the BIOS console into
> the Console window. This is cleaner, and works with any graphics card.

Alternatively the output could be redirected to /dev/null, couldn't it?


	- Eero