XXXX CD: using a small Mac monitor (long)

[Phil Rose <pjrose@servtech.com>]

This note describes a technique that I stumbled on this afternoon (with
apologies if it's already been mentioned--or is considered obvious). It
could be useful to those Macintosh users who are interested in running the
XXXX CD program, but whose monitors have insufficient resolution.

My Macintosh G3 Powerbook (laptop) computer has a nice 14.1" (diag) active
matrix display panel with great definition, but its 1024x768 pixels maximum
resolution falls short of the1200x960 (?) resolution demanded by the
E************ T***ka***** program. But in spite of the  deficient
resolution, I decided to try using the the XXXX CD with the Powerbook (btw,
I'm running Win95 in Virtual PC 2.1 software emulation). This VPC software
has worked very well on my desktop G3 Macintosh system, and I thought:
wouldn't it be nice to have the XXXX CD  data also available from a
portable computer?

As expected, when the Display control in Win95 is set equal to the maximum
resolution of the Powerbook monitor, i.e., 1024x768,  then  the
E************ T***ka***** program has a 2-3 inch-wide section along the
right side that falls off-screen. This loses part of each p/n page plus
several of the program's menu buttons. And as most of us know by now, the
darned program makes no provision for scrolling. So it's pretty useless
this way. What to do?

Well, Virtual PC emulation makes it possible to run the Win95 desktop in a
Mac "window mode" (small "w"). This  mode places the Win95 desktop within a
Mac window. Although this window unfortunately lacks the usual scroll bars,
it can be moved on the screen by any desired extent by click-dragging on
the title "bar" of the window or on any point on the window edges.  But so
what, since1024x768 is still too small, right?

Well, it turns out that Virtual PC tries to size its Win95 desktop
according to _whatever_ resolution value is entered in the Windoze
"Display" control panel, so I decided to *not* tell Windoze the sad truth
about my Powerbook's limited resolution. In fact, I have Windoze thinking
that the monitor is the Sony 17" multiscan on my other system. That enabled
me to set the resolution slider at1280x1024. Consequently, we have
VPC/Win95 creating a 1280x1024 Win95 desktop within a 1280X1024 Mac window,
and the entire E************ T***ka***** program can fit very comfortably.
Since the program/window is now obviously larger than the Powerbook
1024x768 screen,  it's necessary to move (drag) the window around in order
to view all areas. A lot of tedious dragging is required so It's actually
not very friendly for casual browsing. Nevertheless _all_ of the program
and data are viewable and usable--despite the screen's limited size.

If I could find a Mac utility that allows an application window to be
dragged from *anywhere* within the boundary (not just at the edges), then
using the Powerbook could be...almost...convenient. For now though,
convenient browsing-- for me--means using my desktop G3 with (1280x1024)
17" screen.  But on the road  my Powerbook may now have some Audi-enhancing
capability (in addition to producing Steet Atlas USA maps).




Phil Rose				Rochester, NY
'91 200q				mailto:pjrose@servtech.com
'89 100