MACCEL34.PRG by Ken Badertscher
Copyright 1989, Atari Corp.

Why another mouse accelerator?
==============================
I guess just don't get enough punishment working on the other
system software here at Atari.

History:
Once upon a time, there was this mysterious three-hundred-odd byte
program that had the peculiar side-effect of accelerating the mouse
cursor.  I'm not sure what else it did, but then, I only wrote it.

Later on, this program got a little more useful - it let you
communicate with it, it put up informative messages, it was able
to find itself in memory so you couldn't run it twice (running it twice
or more would result in hilarious consequences if you so much as bumped
the mouse), and so on.  It was still a bit primitive, however.

Months later, I decided that I needed another breed of screen saver -
it seemed that all the ones I had featured, um, interesting
side-effects.  What better place to put a screen saver than in a mouse
accelerator, right? And while I was at it, I could spruce up the mouse
accelerator, right?

Right.

Here it is.  Mouse Accelerator /// v4.0.  It uses a new-and-improved
algorithm for acceleration - you may like the feel of it better than the
original MACCEL.  You may even enjoy the screen saver, but if you don't
you can always disable it.  I'm sure that you'll like the means of
communicating with MACCEL34 better than MACCEL.  What was I thinking of
when I came up with ControlShiftAltLeftClick?!


Using MACCEL34
==============
First you need to put MACCEL34.PRG in your auto folder.  You don't need
to reboot; you can install it from the desktop.  MACCEL34 functions both
as an auto folder program that installs the mouse accelerator and screen
saver and as a configuration program that allows you to change the way
it operates.

After you have put MACCEL34.PRG in your auto folder, run it from the
desktop.  You will be presented with a dialog box that has a title at
the top, three rows of selection buttons, and some actions at the
bottom.  Let's deal with them in order:

Selections
==========
The first row of selection buttons are for Acceleration.  You have two
choices, Fast or Slow.  Selecting a button will activate that speed, so
try them out and see which one you like.

The second row turns the Screen Saver On or Off. (The interesting
capitalization here is to emphasize what appears in the dialog.)  If you
have the screen saver on, after about four minutes of inactivity, it
will kick in.  If you have a color monitor, your monitor will go black. 
Don't panic, your monitor is not broken, just bump the mouse or hit a
key (even a shift key) and the display will be restored.  If you have a
monochrome monitor, it will toggle black-white/white-black about every
15 seconds or so.  This prevents an image from "burning in" to your
monochrome monitor by constantly flip-flopping the image.  Bump the
mouse or hit a key to restore a sane display.

The third row of selection buttons has the mysterious title "Watch
Modem." This feature is useful if you, like me, tend to spend too much
time on BBS's and online services.  If you are watching a live CB
discussion or reading long messages on an online service, there may be
a long period of time during which you don't touch a key or use the
mouse.  It would be most annoying for the screen saver to kick in while
you're reading a message.  That's what "Watch Modem" is for.  If you
select Yes, the screen saver timer will be reset by characters coming
in the modem port as well as by keyboard or mouse activity.  If you run
a BBS, you should set "Watch Modem" to No, so that the screen saver
timer won't be constantly reset by your callers.

Actions
=======
Finally, let's look at the row of action buttons at the bottom, from
right to left.  As with most dialog boxes, the rightmost button is
Cancel.  If you have not yet installed the mouse accelerator, selecting
Cancel will exit the program without installing it.  If you have
already installed the mouse accelerator, select Cancel to exit the
program and restore the accelerator to the state it was in before you
started messing with the selection buttons.

The middle action button is Save.  You can save the current mouse
accelerator configuration directly into your copy of MACCEL2.PRG.  It
expects to find itself in the auto folder of your boot device.  If it
isn't there, or if you have renamed it, you can tell it that you want
to Locate your copy of MACCEL34.PRG; it will present you with a standard
file selector so that you can locate it.  If you make a mistake and
select the wrong file, you needn't worry.  MACCEL34 is fairly
intelligent about saving its configuration - it won't try to save a
configuration in a program that isn't MACCEL34, or in a text file, for
example.  It will let you know if it had any problems saving the
configuration.  The next time you boot using the configured copy of
MACCEL34.PRG, it will use the defaults you have set.

The left action button is the default button, and it has a different
label depending on whether or not MACCEL34 has been installed since 
you booted your ST.  If it has not yet been installed, the button will
read "Install", and selecting it will install the mouse accelerator
with the selections you have made via the selection buttons.  If it
has already been installed, the button will read "Configure", and
selecting it will reconfigure MACCEL34 based on the selection button
settings.  In either case, selecting this button will exit the
program.  NOTE: Selecting "Configure" will not permanently save your
configuration; you must use the "Save" button to do that.  Configure
will only configure the MACCEL34 that is currently installed in 
memory.

Th-th-th-that's all, folks!
===========================
That's about all there is to it!  Next time you boot with MACCEL34 in
your auto folder, it will install the mouse accelerator and screen
saver (depending on how you have configured it), and print the message
"Mouse Accelerator 3 v4.0 installed."  If you need to reconfigure it 
for any reason, just open a window onto your auto folder and run it
from the desktop any time.  If you're concerned about how much memory
MACCEL34 uses, don't be.  Almost all of the program goes away after it
has installed the mouse accelerator and screen saver drivers.  The
critical parts have been written in assembly to be as small and as
fast as they can be.
