Zogging Hell!!!

Presumably if you've got this far then your computer is working and you can now see the delightful GEM desktop in front of you on your TV or monitor (Note if your using a high resolution monitor then pretend these screen shots are in black and white).

Background to GEM

Apple Mac users may be suprised at the similarity of GEM to their own computers interface particularly if they have an early model. That's because GEM is, er, a bit of a rip off merchant. Basically for the time (1984/1985) it offered a similar quality interface to the Mac on a more powerful and cheaper computer. Quite how the Mac survived that one is beyond me. GEM wasn't just available for the ST either; way before Windows hauled itself up to its current all conquering status, GEM was the only graphical interface on the PC. Apple were incensed and sued Digital Research (the creators of GEM) for breach of copyright. Apple won (despite the fact the desktop idea had been around before them anyway) and GEM development ceased on the PC, but not on the Atari ST. Quite how Atari got away with this is beyond me, maybe Apple didn't see the ST as a threat (rightly in the end) or maybe the fact that one of the co-founders of Apple had once been an Atari employee swayed their decision. Anyway enough of the history lesson. Not everyone has got a Apple, PC owners at this point will be grumbling at the lack of a Start Bar and people who've never used the desktop and windows system before (there can't be many out there that haven't, but just in case) will just be scratching their heads and asking why it's such an awful shade of green.

First Steps

In front of you, you will see a large expanse of green. Above this are four words, namely the legends 'Desk', 'File', 'View' and 'Options'. This is called the 'Menu'. To the left of the screen are three pictures. The first of these is labelled 'A' and has the legend 'Floppy Disk' written underneath it. The second one down is virtually identical other than that it is labelled 'B'. Underneath this is a crude picture of a dustbin labelled 'Trash'. These are called 'Desktop Icons'. In the centre of the screen, unless you've moved the mouse, is an arrow/pointer. You use this to interface with your computer. If you've used a modern PC or any Mac you should feel at home here. The mouse responds exactly as it does on the PC/Mac with single clicks to select and double clicks to open. For sake of the arguement here though (and as this really is for beginners) we'll start at the beginning. Firstly rest the mouse on a flat surface (hopefully by this point you've read part one and plugged it in). Now just move the mouse around watching how the arrow/pointer responds to its movements. If you move the arrow to close to the top of the screen the Desk, File etc legends will turn into lists of options. Ignore these for now and just move the arrow/pointer to a empty patch of green on the screen and press the left mouse button. The menus should now go. Apple Mac and PC users will probably be annoyed by this automatic 'drop down' or menus but at the moment you'll have to grin and bear it.

Opening and Viewing a Disk

Insert the floppy disk into your ST's internal floppy drive (you may also have an external drive). Move you arrow/pointer over the desktop icon labelled 'A Floppy Disk' or Floppy Disk A and press the mouse button twice in quick succession. This is called double clicking. If you do this correctly (and it might take a bit of practice) a 'window' should open up like that in the diagram below. This displays the contents of the disk. Floppy Disk A always refers to the ST's internal disk drive. Floppy Drive B is slightly different in that it can either refer to an external disk drive (if one is connected) or a different disk in the internal disk drive. Slightly confusing but we'll go into this below...

Windows

This bit describes the window and what each part of it does.
The central area represents the contents of a folder or disk. It's white and contains several icons. Above this is a line saying something like 1003243 bytes contained in 34 items. This is how many items are in the particular folder and how much data they are taking up.

The Closer Button closes the current window or if your in a folder (also known as a directory) then it moves to the directory above, or the folder or disk the folder is in (confusing eh?). Get used to it though as it's the button you'll be most using when you control the window.

The title bargives you the name of disk or folder you are currently in or have selected. It does this by giving you a path; that is a route map to your folder. So say you have a folder (called 'ATARI') on a disk (in the internal drive) which contains a file called 'ATARIST.PRG'. The path displayed in the window title bar would read like this: A:\ATARI\ATARIST.PRG.
The window title bar also has another useful quality. It can be used to move the window around the screen. Using the left mouse button click and hold the mouse pointer on the title bar as shown in the picture above. You should now see a faint outline of the window (also known as a ghost of the window) appear. While keeping the mouse button held down, move the mouse about and you should see the ghost image following the mouse pointer. Move this ghost image to a different position on the desktop and release the mouse button. The ghost image should be replaced by the real window in its new position. Congratulations you have not only moved the window but also learned a new skill. Dragging. This a vital skill and can be used on other things on the desktop. For example try clicking and holding on the TRASH icon on the desktop and then dragging it to a new position. This way you can alter the desktop so it's easy for you to use by putting all items where you want them.

To the right of the title bar (unless your a bat ;-)) is a button that allows you to expand the size of the window. Single clicking with the left mouse button on this button expands the window so it fills most of the available screen area. This is useful if you are trying to find a particular file. Single clicking again reduces the window back to its original size. It's slightly inflexible but is very useful in some circumstances. For a more useful method of controlling the size of the window you should use the button below.

Located at the bottom right of the window, this button allows you to re-size the window to a size that you feel is right. The button works on the drag and drop principle, so if you click and hold the left mouse button on it a ghost image of the window should appear. Moving the mouse allows you to re-size the window and releasing it causes the window to change to the newly defined size.

The final bit of window functionality is achieved by means of the bottom and right parts of the window's 'frame'. These are called scroll bars, for no other reason than that they allow you to scroll round the window. You will notice that each of these consists of two arrows pointing in opposite directions in between which is a white square and a dotted area. These allow you to navigate around the window. If the number of files that can be displayed in your folder is greater than will fit into your window some files will be hidden from view. Clicking on the arrows allows you to move around the window in intervals of one file at a time. This can be a bit slow if you've got a lot of files to display and just want to get to the bottom. Clicking below the white box in the dotted area on the vertical right hand scroll bar will cause the display area of the window to move down one whole window length. You will notice that the white box has moved down and that there is now a dotted area above the white box. Clicking in this area will move the visible are back up again by one window length. The horizontal scroll bar works in a similar fashion other than it moves the window horizontally.
There is a another way to move about the window using the scroll bars however. Clicking and holding the white box using the left mouse button allows you to drag the scroll bar to the required position. This can allow you to zip to files which aren't immeadiately visible.

Well that's it for windows. Remember practice makes perfect.

Files and Folders

When you opened/ viewed the disk icon you were presented with a series of files and folders icons within the window. Underneath the icons are short (eight character) descriptions of the file or folder they represent. There are three types of icon that GEM displays when you view a disk. The first type, folders, are subdivisions within disk, which essentially make it easier to organise your files. Folders are represented by an icon that looks a bit like a paper folder (suprising eh?). Double clicking on a folder displays its contents. On the ST all folders are displayed in the same window. So when you double click on a folder the contents replace the previous contents of the window. Windows by default opens up a seperate window for a new folder.
The second type of icon are programs. These are represented by a square with two lines at the top. Program files are basically the icons you will have to double click on to start word processors, games and other applications. Programs come in a variety of forms. Most commonly a program will have either '.APP' or '.PRG' after the name of program. For example 1STWORD.PRG. These letters are referred to as extensions.
The final main catergory of icons represent files. These look like stacks of paper with one upturned corner. These files generally hold all-sorts of data needed by programs and can have a variety of extensions. Some of the most common are .CNF (configuration file), .TXT (test file readable from the desktop), .DOC (1ST WORD document), .HYP (Hypertext help file), .HTM (HTML file) and .RSC (a program resource file). There are many others though.
There is another catergory of icons that you may come across these are TOS and TTP programs. TOS and TTP programs have an extension of either .TOS or .TTP at the end of their label but have the same icon as a program file. These are somewhat worrying when they execute because they bypass GEM blanking out the screen and then filling it with text. We'll go into TOS and TTP files at a later date but for now just don't start them by double clicking on them.

Copying Files

Copying files is fairly straight foward assuming your using a one disk based system. As we've mentioned before the icons Floppy Disk A and Floppy Disk B represent two disk drives. Fine if you have two disk drives attached. You can simply put one disk in Drive B and use the icon to open it and then do the same for Drive B. Then you can just copy the files across. But if you have a one disk drive as we've explained things are more complex. In a one drive system the Floppy Disk B stands for a second disk in drive A. You'll probably never come across this on the PC as the floppy on that computer is mainly used for loading files onto its hard disk. Just try copying a disk to another disk without using the hard drive and you'll see where this falls down. To get round this on the ST double clicking on the Floppy Disk B icon when there is no second drive attached brings up a dialogue box asking you to insert Disk B into Drive A. So basically the disk that would have gone into an external drive is Disk B.
To copy files then on a single floppy system is a case of inserting the disk you want to copy from into the internal disk drive amd double clicking on the Floppy Disk A icon. Then double click on Floppy Disk B. The computer prompts you to insert Disk B, do so. You should now have two windows open in front of you. One with an A:\ in the title bar and one with a B:\ in the title bar. The next part is the tricky bit. Select the file you want to copy by clicking and holding the left mouse button (select one from the floppy disk A). Now use the drag and drop method to drag the icon of the file from the Floppy Disk A window to the Floppy Disk B window. A dialogue box will appear asking you to confirm the copy. Click on OK and then swap the disks in the internal drive as demanded. It is important you remember which disk is Disk A and which is Disk B, otherwise there can be dire consequences. GEM has an awful method of copying disks. Copying one file takes three or four disk swaps. Copying two files takes six disk swaps. This is because GEM loads one file into memory at a time rather than loading as many files as it can get into memory. Believe me copying a disk with ninety or so files is a real pain and bad for your disk drive and your arm. I would seriously advise you to get a second floppy drive for your system as soon as possible as it will make life a lot easier. I'll be covering this in the next article.
You can also copy files as follows: Open the floppy disk A window and then drag a file to the Floppy Disk B icon releasing the button when the icon turns black. This method is only useful for copying files to the uppermost directory on a disk (known as the root directory) and opening two windows allows you to have much greater control over where your file is going.

Working with several windows at once

Selecting different windows is a fairly easy task. If you open several windows up you will notice one of them is slightly darker than the others and if two windows are occupying the same space one will be overlying the others. This is the 'topped' window and any actions you want to carry out are carried out in the topped window. You can change which window is topped or selected by simply clicking on the window you want to select. Before you carry out any file operations you should make sure the window you think your working from is in fact the topped window. Otherwise that file you've just created may not appear on the disk you want it to. Note also that GEM can only open four windows at once and if you try to open more it will complain to you that 'GEM has no more windows'. Replacements for GEM allow you to open many more windows, but that will be covered later.

Deleting a File

Deleting a file is similar to copying one. This is where your ugly 'Trash' icon lurking at the bottom left hand corner of the screen comes in. Deleting a file is as simple as dragging it from an open Floppy Disk window down to the trash icon. The trash can will run black when the file is above it and then release the left mouse button. A dialogue window will open asking you if you want to proceed with deleting the file. Beware here as unlike the Apple Mac and PC there is no recovery for a deleted file. Once it's gone it's gone. Actually that's not entirely true there is a way to recover files but it's not as easy and it's beyond the scope of this particular article, one for the future maybe.

Copying and Deleting Multiple Files

So you think you've mastered copying and deleting eh? But what if you want to move more than one file at once. This can be solved by two methods. The first is 'rubber banding'. If you click and hold the left mouse button on a blank spot in a window (not on an icon) and then move the mouse down and to the right you will notice a rectangular 'ghost' box appear. All the files underneath the box turn black. You release the button when you've selected the files you want, they should remain black. Then click and hold the left mouse button on one of the selected files, you can now drag the lot to either a new disk or file or if you want to delete them, to the trash. Rubber banding is useful but if you want to copy files that are not all next to each other you need to use the shift key. Holding down the SHIFT key on your keyboard and single clicking using the left mouse button allows you to select multiple files, which can then be dragged to there destination. On later versions of TOS (The Operating System) rubber banding and the shift key method can be combined for ultimate flexibility. The only way to find out whether you can do this is to try it. If not then you have an early TOS version.

Description of What Does What in the Menu Bar!

In this section we're going to look at all the basic things you can do with the GEM menu bar. That's the annoying things that pop up every time you move your mouse over the white area with text in it at the top of the screen.

Firstly move your mouse up to the word DESK on the menu bar. A menu should drop down. The uppermost entry on this menu is something called DESKTOP INFO. You might also get other entries in this menu. These are called desk accessories. For now however ignore these and just click on DESKTOP INFO.

A window similar to the one above should open. This has got to be one of the least helpful parts of GEM. Very little can be gleaned from it other than the TOS version, and even that is only useful if you know the dates for the different TOS versions. Putting the amount of free memory in this dialogue box would have made it much more useful, but hey!

To the right of the DESK menu is the FILE menu. Accessing the entries in this menu require certain criteria to be fufilled. The topmost entry is labelled open. To use this option you have to select a file or disk drive. How do you do this? I hear you ask, well selecting a file or drive is achieved by single clicking with the left mouse button on it. The drive or folder will go black (as in the picture above). De-selecting a file is as simple as clicking on a patch of green on the desktop or blank spot in a window. Anway once a file is selected the OPEN option performs the same task as a double click. To be honest you won't use this option much as it's much easier to double click in most instances.
Underneath the OPEN option is SHOW INFO.

This requires a file or disk drive to be selected to activate. Clicking on SHOW INFO will bring up a window, within which is contained information about the disk or file that you selected. For instance it will tell you the size of the file or the number of files and folders on the disk. This might not seem immeadiately useful but it soon will. It's very useful when copying to floppy disk and you need to know whether you'll be able to fit all the files on for example.

Underneath SHOW INFO is NEW FOLDER. For this to work a window displaying a disk or folder contents must be open. This is a commonly used option and allows you to organise your files effectively.

Clicking on NEW FOLDER allows you to specify a name for your folder.

Underneath NEW FOLDER are the menu options CLOSE and CLOSE ALL. CLOSE has the same effect as clicking on the closer button on a window, while CLOSE ALL closes the window regardless of which folder your in. Personally I never use these as it's a darn site quicker just to use the closer button on the window.

Finally in the FILE menu is the big scary one. FORMAT.

FORMAT is used to make the disks readable by the ST. ST's can read PC floppies so you might never need to do this. But more than likely you will. Remember if you format a disk you loose all information that may be on it (As a helpful dialogue tells you before you try to format something) so never use it on a disk with anything you want to keep on it. Once you've formatted it there is no return.
Enough with the doom and gloom. When you open the format dialogue you get a screen similar to the above. You can select which disk drive, A or B, you wish to format (useful for those with two disk drives). To keep things sraight in your head though it is best to put the disk you want to format in drive A (the internal drive). Underneath this is a option stating SINGLE or DOUBLE sided. You should pretty much always use the DOUBLE option in this case as it gives you more space on the disk for your files.
A note about disks. The ST uses in most cases Double Sided Double Density Disks. These are no longer used by PC's which use Double Sided High Density disks. The ST can't use these (well it can but that's for later). Some early ST's (and your unlucky if you find one) can only format disks to SINGLE sided capacity. You need to track down some double density disks from somewhere, they are helpfully however still being made so it shouldn't be too difficult.
Anyway back to the task at hand. Once you've set up the options as you require (normally Drive A and Double Sided). You then click on the OK button. After a warning the ST will plod off to slowly format the disk (keep and eye on the progress bar). Once it has finished the ST will display a window telling you how much space is on the disk. IF you then exit the format window/dialogue by clicking on the CANCEL button you can open the disk using the floppy disk icon and then view the empty window that results.

Moving on to the VIEW menu.

The VIEW menu is used to manipulate the contents of open windows. A window needs to be open to access any of the options. The first option SHOW AS ICONS doen't seem to do anything when you click on it. That's because by default the contents of a window are shown as icons (see the tick). However if you click on the SHOW AS TEXT option you will notice a big change. The icons have gone and have replaced by some ugly looking text. Although not so pretty and not so immeadiately easy to get to grips with this is the better way of working with files. If however you hate it you can now click on the SHOW AS ICONS option in the menu to get things back to the way they were.
Underneath these options in the VIEW menu are a range of options for the order in which your file are displayed. The default option is SORT BY NAME. This sorts the files in the window by name with the folders positioned first. SORT BY DATE changes the order to the order in which the files were created (note the date stamp in text mode).
Note the ST although having a internal clock doesn't have a battery backed one. This means everytime you turn off the computer the time resets to the date when the TOS/GEM version you are using was made. This is most annoying. So how do you set the date? Well you use an accessory called 'Control', but we'll talk about that later.
SORT BY SIZE organises the files in order of size (number of bytes) and SORT BY TYPE uses the file extension to order the files in the window.

Finally we come to the OPTIONS menu entry.

The first entry in this menu is INSTALL DISK DRIVE. At this stage you won't really need it as its main purpose is adding icons for hard disks and CD Roms etc. You can however use it to add another Floppy Disk A icon for example which you might want to put over the other side of the screen. To install a disk drive do the following: Select an already existing disk drive (for example Floppy Disk A) and the menu entry should become accessible. Click on install disk drive in the menu. A dialogue appears allowing you to change the drive identifier and label. So Floppy Disk A would have an identifier of A and a label of Floppy Disk. You could change the label to whatever you liked. A hard disk would have a identifier of C as A and B have been used up by floppy disks. Therefore it might read Drive: C, Label: Hard Disk. Clicking on INSTALL at this point will create a new icon on your desktop to access the new drive (or it might just change the label for your old one). It won't of course wok if your haven't actually got one. To remove a disk drive, select the drive you want to remove go to the INSTALL DISK DRIVE option and then click on REMOVE.

Underneath INSTALL DISK DRIVE in the OPTIONS menu is INSTALL APPLICATION.

This is a very useful desk entry, but its scope is a bit beyond this first tutorial. In brief the dialogue allows you to set programs to autostart on boot up and also designate certain applications to automatically load files when you double click on them.

The next option down in the OPTIONS menu is the SET PREFERENCES option.

The main purpose of the SET PREFERENCES option is to allow the ST to change resolution on a television or a low resolution monitor. The ST boots up in low resolution however switching to medium resolution gives more space for programs such as word processors to work in. Mono users unfortuantly can't change resolution. The dialog also allows the user to turn off some of the confirmation dialogues if they feel the need. Changing to medium resolution is as simple as clicking on the MEDIUM button and then clicking on OK. If you don't like the new resolution (it doesn't look very clear on some TVs, then simply go back into the SET PREFERENCES dialogue and click on the LOW button and then OK.

The penultimate option is SAVE DESKTOP.

This dialogue allows you to save any changes to disk in a file called DESKTOP.INF. So if you have changed your view of folders to text mode or want to boot up in medium resolution rather than low, saving the desktop will save you having to configure the desktop again next time you run it.

The final option is PRINT SCREEN.

This is a fairly poor option that allows you to do a crude, screen dump in Epson compatible format. If your printer doesn't offer Epson compatibility your out of luck. Occasionally useful, but not often.

This brings us to the end of this introduction to the desktop.

Congratualations you're ready for the next stage of the ST Guide
Go to 'The ST Guide Part Three: Your Disk Drive and Adding Another One!'