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Graphic Interpretation - Demo Mania
by Bruce Thomas

Somewhere, on a disk, I know I have the start of a great article. If I don't find it nothing major will happen - I'll just have to start it over. It's just that I hate the thought of losing a piece of writing that I have put some effort into.

I know the flow I had envisioned for the article as I have some scribbled rough notes on a dog-eared piece of paper that has been sitting on my desk for about 6 years. Amazingly enough, I still feel that the article will be relevant when I do get it finished. Today, I went looking for it.

Office Clutter

Now, in my own way I'm an organized type of guy (although my wife would tell you different). My office has paper here and there, stacks of disks and shelves full of books. I have magazines and newsletters in piles on the floor and various pieces of hardware lying about as well. As long as nobody else comes in looking for something I am pretty good at knowing just where I put things.

Most of the disks in my collection have labels on them and quite a few even have a rough list of the contents. At the very least they are marked to tell me their format (single or double-sided, flippy, one or two 1581 partitions, Native FD format, etc.).

There are disk utilities to help locate files (including FINDER for Wheels - see the Sept. 1999 GO64!) but a person must have some idea of what the file was called for these to be of any use and going through a pile of floppies would be tough. I figured I would just start putting disks into the FD and pressing the JiffyDOS 'F1' key to call up the directory listing. The '@CP2' JiffyDOS command lets me quickly change partitions when needed.

I didn't find the article I was looking for but I did come across a disk I haven't thought about for quite a few years. This disk contains a number of demo files and I thought I would mention a few of them here because they contain some good information and ideas.

Most people are aware that the 64 is a great computer to program on and demos are quite popular. These can be extremely elaborate with terrific graphics, stories and outstanding musical scores coming from teams of developers. The demos I had collected on this particular disk were not in this league.

A few words from BSW

When Berkeley Softworks released GEOS V2.0 on three 1541 flippies they found they had one side with nothing to put on it. Even with all of the improvements that they had made to the system since V1.3 they were only able to fill 5 disks worth of software. On the sixth disk they decided to promote some of their other products so they included a number of DEMOs.

If you have the basic GEOS V2.0 System you should check out these demos if you haven't already done so. There is an Introduction demo which explains how the rest of the demo's work and how to control them (they have built-in timers to advance along or keyboard commands let you control them manually).

The other demos provide more in-depth coverage of the capabilities and the many features of geoFile, geoCalc, FontPack Plus, DeskPack Plus and geoPublish. The BSW family of GEOS products offers a lot and the programs all share the same point and click interface. You may just find that one of them does what you want.

Another BSW demo is the GEOS DEMO which introduces the GEOS V2.0 system and provides a quick look at some of the add-on packages available. This demo was packaged with the two-disk geoPublish version and also with geoChart.

On with the shows...

Some of the other demos that I have on the disk are really cool Desktop Simulators. By that I mean that you run the demo and a fake Desktop appears. This group of demos are all advertisements for commercial disk products.

The first of these, AntiGrav Demo, was created by Randy Winchester as an ad for Randy's geoDisk I and II. This ad mimics the look and feel of the original GEOS 1.3 Desktop. All of the GEOS Desktop features are in place but the Icons are for the actual programs on the disk. Clicking on an Icon, or choosing a file name from the View menu, brings up a short description of the program. You can download the geoDisk files from the GEOS page on Randy's web site at http://web.mit.edu/randy/www/antigrav/antigrav.html.

The evolution of GEOS is evident in the next of these demos that came out. Jean Major promoted his GEOS Utilities Disk 1 in the fashion of GEOS V2.0 with DEMOUtilities. This demo features a fully functioning GEOS clock with the proper date/time, support for Desk Accessories and it runs in 40 or 80 column mode (most of the rest of these demos are 40 column only). Jean has moved on from the Commodore world and has released his popular software into the Public Domain.

The Storm System disk is loaded with great software by Joe Buckley (aka Red Storm) and his demo also supports D.A.'s and the GEOS clock. The Garbage Can may shed some light on Joe's attitude towards the folks at BSW as it returns the following text when clicked on - 'Berkeley Softworks - The lightest minds are working at Berkeley'.

Scott Resch wrote a lot of good GEOS programs for Loadstar. These were released together on the geoPower Tools disk. This product is still available from Loadstar for $10 plus $1 postage if you are outside of the United States (prices in US $). The geoPower AD demo features a really cool color intro.

Desktop 9.9 is a demo written with geoBASIC that calls itself a geoParody. This simulated Desktop features a working clock and two 1571 Disk Icons - one RAM 1571 and one Ewe 1571. Clicking on the geoWrite 8 1/4 Icon brings up a Dialog Box stating that it requires an "HP-geoPlasma Laserwrite Optical Interface. We doubt that you can afford one..". The menus offer choices such as File -> Nail, Disk -> Slipped and View -> LA Skyline. Unfortunately, none of these options do anything so the effect is not as good as it could have been.

Cripple Ware

The next bunch of demos are what is called Cripple Ware. This means that the program actually runs but it has had certain key features disabled.

First up in this crowd is the geoFAXDemo from Maurice Randall. This demo comes up with the original geoFAX screen and provides a little insight into the workings of the program in the accompanying dox file. While it is possible to select a geoPaint file and watch it scroll out of the FAX machine on the screen the actual FAX portion of this demo does not work.

Next up is a demo of a very rare program from Kent Smotherman. geoCheckBook is one of the many fine programs that Kent wrote for the GEOS environment. The geoChkBkDemo has had the Printing features removed but otherwise does an admirable job of handling cheque tracking chores. I also have the fully working version that I bought from Kent shortly before he sold his software and rights to Parsec, Inc and it all disappeared.

Dave Ferguson wrote some neat software for GEOS and his geoStampDemo is a taste of one of these programs. This Desk Accessory loads into geoPaint and allows you to stamp pre-formed characters onto the screen.

Maurice Randall has been very busy writing lots of amazing software for GEOS users and he wants people to try it. That must be why he released a demo version of geoShell. If you are not familiar with this program it is a Command Line Interface (CLI) for the GEOS environment. This means that you type in commands - very similar to using a C-64 without loading GEOS. The mouse still works for some things in this environment and if you buy the full program it can be set up as your default Desktop. Working in a CLI is much faster than in a graphical environment as you don't have to wait for screens to redraw. Maurice continues to update the commercial product and a number of new commands are packaged with his Wheels product.

Watch This!

The NEWTOOLS Demo and the geoLABEL Demo programs were created with Spike Dethman's Click Pix. These two demos are stand-alone programs that let you scroll around a geoPaint file without loading geoPaint. The features of both programs are easy to see from these well laid out demos.

The next demo in this bunch is by Nate Fiedler and is called Chaos. This program demonstrates the Chaos Game as it fills the center of your screen with the Sierpinski Triangle.

The Ultimate Demo

Probably the most widely known GEOS demo is Maurice Randall's 1995 WaveDemo. The demo is cripple-ware but it does contain a working Terminal program that allows users to dial up BBS Systems and Internet Shell Accounts. The WaveDemo created a huge amount of interest in the Commodore community and that interest is finally being rewarded. While the Wave Browser that Maurice is developing at present does not have much in common with this demo program it carries with it an amazing history and will fulfill the hopes of many users around the world.

There you have it. A look at some interesting demo programs created for the GEOS System. While some of these demos will be included on the monthly Cover Disk I hope that you will seek out the full products that are still available as they all add an extra dimension to your GEOS computing experience. As for me, I guess I have to start typing that old article all over again.

Until next time, enGEOy your Commodore!