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DIOX version 0.95 Copyright 1987 by Paul Huntington ---------------- A complete DIOX system should have the following ... DIOXMH95.PRG ---------> The program itself (med/hi res, v0.95) DIOX.DOC -------------> This documentation DRAW_BTN.LST ----------> Procedure to be merged BOXTEST.BAS ----------> The dialog box tester Plus an example ------------------------------------------ EXAMPLE.DAT/.DSH -------> Exmples to create with EXAMPLE.LST -----------> Example dialog box (Part 1) INTRODUCTION: --------------------------------------------------------- The purpose of DIOX is to allow the GFA BASIC programmer to quickly and easily create and edit dialog boxes. It will do this by allowing the programmer to visually place and edit the various dialog box buttons, choose thier 'properties' and then generate the actual source code to implement the dialog box. My goal is to eliminate the chore of writing user interfaces so that programmers can concentrate on writting JUST thier applications. No time should be spent on user interface mechanics, instead most of the time should be spent on user interface layout and proccessing the data in a programmers application. Will DIOX accomplish this for you? In my opinion, it should. BUT YOUR OPINION IS WHAT DETERMINES IF DIOX WILL DO ANY GOOD FOR YOU, NOT MY OPINION! What that means is, if for any reason, any version of DIOX won't do a job you're using it for in any particular way, manner, or form, THAT IS NOT MY LIABILTY, IT IS YOURS. IF DIOX screws you up due to a bug, or any other shortcomming, then YOUR the one who got screwed up, not ME, because I'm not legaly responsible for your use of DIOX. I do feel morally responsible for DIOX itself, so I plan to to support it. Your use of it is up to you. In case you didn't recognize what I've just said, it is called a 'WARRANTY DISCLAIMER', only this is in plain English. I've taken every step I know to insure that DIOX is reliable and bug free, but nothing is ever perfect. Version 0.95 has everything I wanted to add EXCEPT EDITABLE BUTTONS. DIOX v1.0 will have editable buttons! This present version will allow you to graphically layout, edit, save, and load an entire dialog box at a time. You can have RADIO, TOGGLE, and EXIT buttons in your box. You can also have one ENTER and one CANCEL button for each box. More on those two shortly. DIOX will work in ALL resolutions. FILES FOR DIOX v 0.95 : DIOX.PRG is DIOX itself. DIOX v 0.95 is 238,508 bytes of pure, 100%, GFA BASIC, compiled with version 1.8 (US) GFA Compiler. The source code will be uploaded to various BBSs if there is a whopping demand for it. DRAW_BTN.LST is to be merged in with your GFA program. You need not know how it works (read the TEST_BOX.BAS listing if you're curious about it). The DRAW_BTN.LST file is a procedure which draws a line of text centered in an optional box frame. ALL DIOX DIALOG BOXES CALL THIS! Just merge it and forget it. The DRAW_BTN.LST file with DIOX v0.95 is DIFFERENT from the one with v 0.90. USE v0.95s' instead of 0.90s'. It will be compatible with any DIOX v0.90 buttons. DIOX.DOC is, of course, this documentation to DIOX. It is divided into THREE parts : 1) Introduction 2) "EDITING" tutorial to get you quickly into editing dialog boxes 3) "INTERFACING" explains how to interface your new dialog box into your program. BOXTEST.BAS is a short program to test any dialog box that you make. Merge in your dialog box ".LST" file that you generated with DIOX, rename the 'Yourbox' in the listing on one of the first few lines to your own boxes' name, then run it. (PART 2) EDITING : --------------------------------------------------------- You start out with DIOX by selecting 'Create'(Unless you have a file to load off disk). The program wants a procedure name for the button. Use up to 32 characters of the type that would normally be allowed in a GFA BASIC PROCEDURE NAME. That means only uppercase-alpha, lowercase-alpha, digits 0-9, and the underscore " _ " character. If an ENTRY ERROR is made an alert box will come up. If this happens, clicking 'OK' will send you back to edit your response, and clicking 'Cancel' will abort the creation. When finished entering the ITEMS NAME, you may wish to jot it down if you think you can't remember it. This will be important to you as you use it in your program, as this is the name that will be passed back to you if the button is clicked on during your programs' run. Next you may want to select STRING under the TEXT heading. This allows you to type in the line of characters that will be in the button . NOTE: DON'T USE THE DOUBLE QUOTE CHARACTER (")! DIOX will check for this error. You may use any of the non-keyboard characters by typing CTRL-A, the ASCII code of the character you want (in your GFA manual), and a cursor key. The special character you want should be visible then. For instance, to get an UP ARROW symbol, type: CTRL-A, 1, then any CURSOR KEY. You are allowed 70 characters for medium or high res, 35 for low res. To create a border simply press '+' and keep pressing it until the border is as thick as you want. If you want to reduce the border thickness, press '-' until the border is as thin as you want it. You can keep doing this until the border is gone. Your buttons don't HAVE to have borders. If you are making an AUTORES box and are doing it from MONO, you may wish to make a default buttons' thickness a little thicker than normal, as auto res cuts thickness in half on medium res from its' original MONO size. That's so it can squeeze evrything onto a medium res screen. To increase the size of the box area, press CURSOR UP for increased vertical size and press cursor right for increased horizontal size. CURSOR DOWN decreases vertical border size and CURSOR LEFT reduces horizontal border size. To actually move the button, place the arrow on top of the button, click the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON, and move the mouse. Note that the arrow disappears. This picks up the button so that it moves with your mouse movements. This also ACTIVATES the button. ACTIVE means that the button is now the present button being worked on, and so whatever text, border, or attribute changes you make will be made to the ACTIVE button. To lay down the button, click the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. You may need to click it twice, as GFA BASIC seems to miss a click occasionaly, but usually once is enough. The +, - and cursor keys will work either when the button your working on is being moved or when the button is layed down. Now you know how to CREATE your first button, make its' TEXT, create its' BORDER, MOVE and PLACE it, and ACTIVATE it for further editing at any time. You can also change its' text SYTLE, SIZE (not in AUTORES), COLOR (not in AUTORES or MONO), choose weather you want to have it drawn in reverse or not by using the SELECTED option, (RADIO and TOGGLE buttons will not be effected by this in the final, generated code. You pre-set these by a PROCEDURE call, more on that later), and choose what ATTRIBUTE it has. ATTRIBUTES are what the buttons do when they are selected. Let's talk about ATTRIBUTES. DIOX has SIX ATTRIBUTES in its' Attr menu strip. RADIO, TOGGLE, EXIT, DEAD, ENTER, and CANCEL. RADIO: RADIO is when you have a group of buttons, but only ONE button can be selected at a time. A "set RS 232 port" dialog box prbably uses a group of radio boxes to set the baud rate, as you can only choose a single baud rate out of several choices. DIOX allows FIVE distinct groups of radio boxes. When you want a button to be a radio button, just select the RADIO option. A dialog box will appear with five buttons labeled "Group 1", "Group 2", "Group 3", "Group 4", and "Group 5". It also has an OK and a cancel button. Select one of those groups and then hit Return or click on OK. Cancel simply aborts any changes. Now, when you see the Attr strip scroll down again, you'll see RADIO's been checked. The buttons' attribute is now set. TOGGLE: Or, maybe you'd rather have it as a TOGGLE button instead. Simply select the TOGGLE option. It will be checked when selected. A toggle button will simply reverse its' state when it's been selected. So if the button is in a turned-off state, it will turn on (reverse) when clicked on. If it is in a turned-on state, it will be turned off when selected. RADIO and TOGGLE are the only two button types that are pre-selectable from your eventual program (via what variable you pass to it in your procedure call- more on that later), they are NOT presetable from DIOX even though you can reverse them there. EXIT: EXIT buttons are also available. Again, just click on that option to make your button an exit button. An exit button will cause an exit from the dialog box when selected. First, though, it will reverse for a moment, just to look like it has been selected. DEAD: DEAD is the default when DIOX first starts up. A dead button does absolutly nothing when selected. It is for a display only. Most of the text in the help screens of DIOX are dead buttons. ENTER: A button given the ENTER attribute is the only DEFAULT button DIOX gives you. By DEAFULT I mean that it will be the button selected when RETURN is pressed. It can also be selected in the usual way with the mouse. When an enter button in your dialog box is selected, the dialog box is exited with the newly selected settings of the other buttons passed back to the main program. Don't worry if you don't understand 'passed back', I'll explain that shortly. CANCEL: A CANCEL button, like ENTER and EXIT, will cause an exit from the routine if it is selected in your programs' dialog box. However, a CANCEL button will cause any of the new button settings to be disregarded and will pass back the old button settings you went in with. Another words, it will cancel any changes made to the dialog boxes' settings. Niether CANCEL or ENTER will ever pass back thier own names. TOGGLE, RADIO, and EXIT buttons' names ARE passed back if they were selected. In summary, The RADIO attribute will cause only one out of a group to be selected. TOGGLE will always reverse the button when selected. EXIT will cause an exit from the dialog box with all new selections passed back. DEAD will do nothing. ENTER will cause an exit if either the return key is hit or it is selected by mouse, passing back all the new selections. CANCEL will exit the dialog box BUT passing back only the PRE-SET values you went in with, canceling all new selections. A tip on ENTER buttons. Generaly, you'd want to make thier borders thicker, as it is generally understood that thicker borders constitute default. Another note: You should use only ONE enter button per dialog box. DIOX will not restrict you to this, but I don't know what would happen if you put in two defaults. Thus far, I have explained how to create a button, put text into it, make its' border, select size, style, and color of text, reverse a DEAD, CANCEL, or EXIT button from DIOX, and assign a button one of six attributes and what those attributes were. Now you'd probably want more than one button in your box. So, simply select CREATE and start up another button. NEVER USE THE SAME NAME FOR DIFFERENT BUTTONS! DIOX will check for this. Since there was a previously active button, the name of the last button activated will be the default text in your edit space. You may only wish to change one character if you have a system of simular buttons, such names as Color_a, Color_b, or you can totaly re-enter a whole new name. If you enter the same name that was there before, NO NEW BUTTON IS CREATED. The creation is just aborted. ALL of the new buttons' properties default to the properties of the LAST ACTIVE BUTTON. You have to change those properties if you want a different looking and/or acting button. Changing an activated buttons' properties is just a matter of selecting the appropriate options, as before. Don't worry, you won't lose the properties of the last button, it was stored away when you made a new button and can be recalled by activating that button again. When all buttons, except the first, are created, they will already be picked up by your mouse. That is so they won't suddenly pop into existance on some other button. Simply take them to where you want to put them, and left- click the mouse to put it down. With more than one button on your screen, you must have a method of directing your text, style, attribute, etc changes to just the one button you're working on. This means you must ACTIVATE the button. You do this by placing the mouse arrow over the button. Then you can either click the right mouse button, which will always mean moving your button at least a few pixels, or you just can press return and not disturb its' position on the screen. Doing either one of these things says to DIOX " I want to work on THIS button now ". When you ACTIVATE a button all of that buttons' characteristics are now displayed in all the menus. The options of CREATE and RENAME( explained below ) will print the buttons' name out when they are selected. The TEXT and ATTR menu strip will display checks at all places which were last selected for THAT button. String option will print the buttons' text out as default when selected. The radios' dialog box will display a radio buttons' group number. This is how you go about getting a status report on a particular button you want to check. Just activate it, and look at all the menus and thier options. They all reflect the buttons' status. I had to use seperate drop down menus to display and set all the settings of a button ( except radio grouping ) because, guess what, I had no efficient method of making dialog boxes. DIOX 0.95 may be 'gutted' and re-fit with a single dialog box for making most of those drop-down menu options for version 1.0. I now have a dialog box editor to do that with. To DELETE a button, ACTIVATE the offending button and press DELETE. The PRESENTLY ACTIVE BUTTON will be gone forever. If you kept pressing DELETE after that, the previously created button from the one just deleted will be, you guessed it, deleted. It keeps going back to the first button. RENAME is another option you may need. If you wanted to, you could just change the name of a button without creating a new one by selecting this option. Also, two new additions to v0.95 are ROUNDED and SEE THRU options. Rounded will cause the buttons' border to have rounded edges. See thru will cause the buttons' background to be transparent. When reversed, anything under it will be reversed. This is usefull for puttings several lines of text under a single button. I am planning on putting a clip-art option onto DIOX, so pictures can be under this button as well as text. What have you learned? By now you should know .... How to CREATE your first button How to make TEXT for your button How to change the STYLE, SIZE, and COLOR of text How to edit the text in your button How to add a border line around your button How to make the border line THICKER or THINNER How to make the border AREA larger or smaller How to assign an ATTRIBUTE to a button How to MOVE your button and PLACE IT somewhere How to CREATE MORE buttons How to ACTIVATE any particular button How to change the SETTINGS of any button, any time How to RENAME a button How to DELETE a button How to make ROUNDED buttons How to make TRANSPARENT buttons You now know how to make, edit, and manipulate buttons, I hope. If not, PLAY-PLAY-PLAY with DIOX! Look at the example given in this text. READ the HELP screens in DIOX (press HELP). OKAY, let's move on to some artistic detailing. You've completed all your buttons and laid them down nicely right next to each other in neat little rows (unless your into 'new-wave' dialog boxes). Now you may wish to enclose your buttons in a box, to graphically seperate them from the rest of the screen. Just select the BOX option. This is different from the older v0.90 version of DIOX. Now you select a fill pattern for the box first. It can be any one of 36 patterns, solid white, or transparent (a frame). Click on this with the left mouse button. The box is now started by placing the cross on a point where one corner of the square is to go. Then click the RIGHT mouse button. Move the mouse around until the frame is the desired shape. Click the LEFT mouse button to lay down the square. To delete any shape, press UNDO and the last shape drawn (not nessesarily the last created because of the bottom option) will be deleted. Let's again review what should now have been learned. Do you know how to use DIOX to do all kinds of things to all kinds of buttons, including making a button go away? I explained how up there. How about making shapes to enhance the appearance of your box? You know how to make shapes go away too, right? GOOD! Now we move on to our final destination. GENERATING THE CODE THAT WILL DO ALL THIS! The SAVE option starts all this 'program generating' up. When all is well with what you've laid out, you'll want to select SAVE. The first thing that pops up is a request to enter the dialog boxes name. Again, same as the BUTTONS' name, a procedure name. IT MUST BE DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER NAME USED IN YOUR BOX. Same as the BUTTONS' NAME rules. It will be checked for uniqueness by DIOX. This is the name you will use to call your box from your procedure. Once you've selected the name and pressed return, a SAVE OPTIONS menu will come up. You can choose to save only the DIALOG BOX DATA, or to just generate a LST file (your dialog box routine), or BOTH. Another option is to make your dialog box RESTORE THE SCREEN AFTER EXIT. A REPORT can be sent to the printer. This will list the dialog boxes' procedure name, and each individual buttons' name, text line, and attribute. I havn't put in a printer check routine, so have everything ready for this. You can get JUST a report without saving by selecting this then selecting cancel at the forthcomming file selector box. The last item is the BUTTON DELAY. This controls how fast the dialog box reacts to your clicking of the mouse button. It defaults to 4. 0 is fastest, 9 is slowest. Select OKAY when done. Now a file selector box will appear. It wants a name to save your .LST file which is the code for your dialog box. Make sure you type in that .LST extender, as DIOX will not add it. When you press return, DIOX starts churning away. The new 0.95 version will now write code to the screen as well as disk, so you see it as it's being written. DIOX will also comment on every new procedure as it creates it. It can be a show. It takes a few seconds to a few minutes to generate a dialog box routine, depending on its' complexity. When the thing stops, you'll know it, as the picture redraws itself and the bee has turned back into an arrow. WARNING! WARNING! I have NOT used traps in DIOX. If you forget to place a disk into the drive or some other catastrophe occours, THE PROGRAM WILL TERMINATE! And your work along with it. Make sure all is well BEFORE using DIOX. OH, before I forget, two other files are laid down besides your .LST file. A .DAT file is the raw data on the dialog box and each of the buttons. A .DSH file is the data on the shapes in your box. THESE ARE WHAT IS LOADED BACK IN FOR FURTHER EDITING. So, now that we have generated a routine that is supposed to implement your design, let's not go right into testing it. First let's cover our last feature, LOADING. To LOAD in a previously SAVEd dialog box, hit ESC. This will CLEAR and RESTART the whole program. Now, select the LOAD option. The file selector will come up with the name of the .DAT files on your directory. It wants to load the .DAT and .DSH files that were previously laid down from SAVE. It doesn't care about the .LST file. Once loaded, your started with the first, created button as your active button. Your ready to continue editing using all the above described features. NOTE! If you load in a file created with DIOX 0.90 into DIOX 0.95, and it had FILL patterns in it, they will not show up. Erase all shapes and start them over again with v0.95s superior method. Remeber, the old fills won't show up, so when deleting, hit UNDO twice. You won't hurt anything by UNDOing too many times. I have kept the BUTTON compatibilty with 0.90 flawless, despite the two new button features (rounded and see thru). (PART 3) INTERFACING ------------------------------------------------------- So, I assume you have a generated .LST file you'd like to quickly put into a program and test. The program called TEST_BOX.BAS will to just that. It has instructions in its' listing for merging it in and testing it. I'll explain it here: Step 1) MERGE your dialog box program into TEST_BOX.BAS either where the listing says you should or in the end of it. Just be sure you don't merge it in the middle of the only other procedure in there, the DRAW_TEXT_IN_BOX procedure. GFA BASIC will not allow procedures within procedures. Step 2) RENAME the Procedure call, @Your_box_name, to your boxes actual name. It is on the first few lines of TEST_BOX.BAS. Step 3) RUN IT! Notice, everytime you select a box you made into an exit box, an enter box, or a cancel box, your box disappears and some names appear inside parentheses, along with other parentheses which are empty. Do some of those names look familiar? Those are the names you assigned to those buttons. When ever a TOGGLE, RADIO, or EXIT box is selected, thier names are passed back between parentheses in one string. Now hit a key. Your dialog box will come back, with the previously selected toggle and radio boxes now pre-selected. Your previous choices were 'echoed' back so you could see that all aspects of the dialog box work. To stop, just press CTRL-SHIFT-ATL as usual. You have now tested your box. Don't bother saving what you've got here. Your goal is to merge it into YOUR program, not the test shell. Now that you've tested it successfully (I hope), let's talk about INTERFACING it to your program. Figure 1 illustrates a flow chart of how the box is linked to your program and a little of how your box will work. The statement you must make to call your dialog box is a simple, one line affair. NOTE: YOU must clear the screen before AND after the box is drawn. Maybe save a screen temporarily using SGET and then doing a CLS. Call your box. When it's finished, use SPUT. I have elected NOT to do this from within a DIOX procedure as it would cut down on the ability of more advanced effects, like thumbwheels perhaps. DIOXS' DIALOG BOXES WILL NOT ERASE ANYTHING. THEY DRAW IT AND LEAVE IT! The before and after of the dailog box is up to you. You make a GOSUB call (I prefer @) with only two strings in the parameter list (parameter list is the part in the parentheses next to the GOSUB statement. They are seperated by a comma. See GFA MANUAL for more info.) The first string is the PRESELECT. This string YOU provide. It can be an empty string if you like, a "" can be put there. If this is the case, none of the toggle or radio buttons will be preselected. Or, if you choose to preselect, simply take the name of the toggle or radio button you typed in when you CREATED it from DIOX, surround it with parentheses, (Like_this), and attatch it to the string. The toggle and radio buttons you specified will then start out in a selected state for default selections. You COULD specify more than one radio button per group be preselected, but then that radio group acts 'wierd', so you'd want to make sure your specifying no more than one radio button per group. Common sense. The second string, the POST-SELECT, must always be a VARIABLE preceded by an asterisk (*) character. That makes that variable a RETURN variable. A return variable is one which is changed by the procedure. YOU provide the string variables' NAME, and the DIALOG BOX will provide the string varibables' CONTENTS. After you've called the dialog box and it has returned (finished, been exited from), you can now use that returned preselect variable as the method of seeing what selections were made on the dialog box. It's format will be exactly the same as the preselects' variable except that it will have an EXIT button name if an EXIT button was chosen. How do you test if a particular name is in your postselect string? Use the INSTR function. The GFA manual has more info on this function, but basically you'd do something like : IF INSTR(Postselect$, "(Buttons_name)")>0 YUP! That button was selected ELSE NOPE! That button was not selected ENDIF CONCLUSION -------------------------------------------- Well, did I cover everything on DIOX? I probably forgot some things. If you run into trouble, leave me EMAIL at GEnie where my address is PHUNTINGTON or on MICHTRONS' Sig there. OR, some local (San Diego, Ca.) BBSs I haunt are MIDI (619)452-7535 24 hours/7 days 1200/2400. SDACE (619)284-3821 24hr/7days 1200/ hopefully 2400 soon. My address is also on the Intro screen of DIOX. Good luck. -------- Paul Huntington | (FIGURE 1) | your program | | Passing \ | / preset names for \ / radio & toggle. Gosub Your_boxes_name -------------------------> Now your |<----------\ dialog box is | | in control. continue with your | | program | \ | / | | /----------> \ / \ | / | | If a button is \|/ | | selected, is it a | | EXIT,ENTER,or | | cancel button? Passing back | | names of buttons \------ NOPE, loop again de-limited, or | seperated by, | parentheses. | | | ----Send back NEW----- YES, ENTER/EXIT /|\ selected exit, | | toggle & radio names | | | \---Send back OLD----- YES, CANCEL Preset radio, toggle button names that were sent IN. No changes. ----------------------------------------------------------- Let's step through an example on how to construct a dialog box. First load up the BOXTEST.BAS file. We're going to see an example which I have previously done. We are going to see how it works when in action. We want to this this first because you are going to build up an identical box, and you probably want to see what it SUPPOSED to do and look like. Now that you are in the BOXTEST.BAS program, merge in the EXAMPLE.LST file into an appropriate spot. A few lines from the top of the program you'll notice a statement @Yourbox (Preset$,*Postset$) rename that statement to @Exmple_box (Preselect$,*Postselect$) and now run the program and the dialog box should appear in the upper half of the screen. This is a self-adjusting AutoRes dialog box. It will appear the same in mono or medium res color. Now twidle with everything and see what it does. Note that when the EXIT buttons, Cancel button, and Okay button is clicked on, the box exits as your choices are printed out. Ok, now you know what you've got to make. So let's do it. Load and run DIOX.PRG. Press return if you've already read the title screen. In medium or High res, an alert box will come up and ask if you want your box to automatically adjust to medium and hi res. Select YES. Now, select the load option and let's take a look at our initial example. Load in the EXAMPLE.DAT file. If your operating with a color monitor in medium resolution, look at what happens to this dialog box! It is not the same thing as you saw on the demo! Although everything fits onto the screen, it covers both halves. That is because AutoRes only effects the LST file which DIOX generates, NOT the actual data of the .DAT or .DSH files, nor will its' draw routines adjust more than the SIZE of the fonts. No matter. It still is editable. But we don't want to edit this. We want to MAKE this. So we will start over by pressing ESCAPE. Then press return. Then select YES to AutoRes again. Now, let's CREATE our first button. Select the create option from underneath the 'Item' drop down menu. It asks for an ITEMS procedure name. That should actually be BUTTONS procedure name, but DIOX is out already, so I'll correct that next time. So now we enter "RADIO_A_1" and return. Nothing should appear to happen on the screen. We need to make the buttons' TEXT, so select the STRING option from the 'Text' drop down. Now it wants a String of characters for your button. Enter "Radio A 1" and return. Now you should see a line of text on the screen as "Radio A 1". You've just typed it in. Pick up the button and move it twoards the right side of the screen. You do that by placing the mouse arrow over the button. Press the RIGHT mouse button for a moment. Now the arrow will be gone and the button moves with the mouse. place it where you previously saw the same "Radio A 1" button in the example (on the right side of the screen, a little up). When placed correctly, you can either press the LEFT mouse button to set it down, or ALT-INSERT (you may need to do either twice as I've noticed GFA can occaisionaly miss a click). Let's make a border (you could mess with its' border while still in movement mode, if you wanted) by pressing the '+' (plus) key once. Now let's increase the horizontal size of the border by pressing the cursor right key twice. So we have our buttons' physical appearance in order. What else do we have to do? How about telling DIOX that this is going to be a RADIO button. So go to the 'Attr' drop down and select RADIO. A dialog box pops up and presents you with a choice of five different 'groupings' of radio buttons. Select group 1. Hit return. This button is now a radio button in radio group 1. Now let's create the next RADIO button, the one we saw in the example as "Radio A 2". Go to CREATE and select it. Now we have the previous text to edit, as DIOX now has a default to present. ALL menu options will reflect the LAST BUTTON YOU ACTIVATED. We don't have to do a complete re- typing in order to get "Radio_A_1" to "Radio_A_2". Press the DOWN cursor button and you're cursor goes to the end of the text line. Hit BACKSPACE once and then press '2'. Hit return. From now on, everytime you create a button, it will automatically start off as being picked up. How about a tip on how to do some precision positioning of buttons? We want a profesional look, yet v0.9 lacks autosnap. No problem. What we want to do is precisley align the new button under our previous one. So, position it approximatley with the mouse just under the other button, the upper edge of its' border should just touch the bottom of the first buttons' border. Next, let go of the mouse and start using the keyboard. Alternate- left cursor or alternate- right cursor will move the button one charcter space left or right. Shifted- alternate- left and right cursors will move left and right one pixel. The same applies for up and down. Now position the new button so its' left and right sides are flush with the old buttons' left and right sides. Use the SHFT-ALT-RIGHT/LEFT for that movement. Use the SHFT-ALT- UP/DOWN for precise alignment of the buttons' top edge to the old buttons' bottom edge, so they just touch. Now, you've got the left-right alignment correct, okay? And the two buttons are just touching vertically? Good. NOW, press ALT-DOWN cursor once. You now have the ability to uniformly space buttons, because ALT-Cursor always spaces the same distance. The next button under this one you put a single ALT-DOWN from this button, and so on. It works like that for horizontal, too. OK, so now your button is precisley in place. So as not to disturb its' position, use the ALT-INSERT button as a substitute for the LEFT mouse click. You may need to do it twice in a row. I use the ALT-CRSR-INSERT keys constantly! They're how I line things up! Now we have to edit its' text. Select the STRING option and simply edit "Radio A 1" into "Radio A 2" by the same method as you did with editing by CREATE. Generaly, you may sometimes wish to temporarily lay down a button, change its' text, then pick it up to line it up. That is because your text length may vary, and so will your buttons' border dimensions. In our case, the text size was the same, so our previous alignment was not futile. How about our most recent buttons' attribute? We haven't messed with that yet. Look at the 'Attr' drop down menu. As you can see, it is already checked-off in front of RADIO. Let's see if our group is still the same. Select RADIO, and there you see that Group 1 is selected already, which is what we want. Press RETURN. You did not HAVE to check the attribute like that, as it was defaulted to that already. I just wanted you to see it for yourself. Now see if you can make a button whose name is 'Radio_a_3' and whose text is "Radio A 3". Position it under the button whose text is "Radio A 2" by one ALT-DOWN length. Remember that its' attribute defaults to radio group 1 if you don't change it, which we don't want to do. Now create another button called 'Radio_a_4' and give it a text line of "Radio A 4". Position it under the button whose text is "Radio A 3" by the length of one ALT-DOWN. All four buttons should now have uniform, even spacing. Let's change gears a little. We are now going to make another 'grouping' of radio buttons. Let's only put in three buttons this time. CREATE a button entitled 'Radio_b_1'. Give a line of text: "Radio B 1" and position it to the left of the button "Radio A 1". Make it four ALT-RIGHT lengths from the button. NOW, we DO want to make some modification to the attribute, as we are dealing with a different radio group. Can you guess how we will deal with this? Yup. Select RADIO from the drop down, select, oh, Group 4 maybe, (that is what the examples' is) and hit return. Now create a button entitled 'Radio_b_2' and give it text of "Radio B 2" and align it one ALT-DOWN length beneath the "Radio B 1" button. Make one more button called 'Radio_b_3', give it text of "Radio B 3" and put it beneath "Radio B 2" by one ALT-DOWN. Remember, the attributes of the last two buttons default to the previous buttons' if you make no changes. We want no changes from "Radio B 1". How about something different? Let's make a TOGGLE button. First, create a button called 'Toggle_1'. Give it text of "Toggle 1" and put it twoards the upper left of the screen. Now, let's select the TOGGLE attribute by selecting TOGGLE from the 'Attr' drop down. Poof! You've got a toggle button. Make a second toggle called 'Toggle_2' and put it one ALT-DOWN beneath 'Toggle_1'. The attribute is still toggle, remember? Make two EXIT buttons now. Call one 'Exit_1' and give it text of "Exit 1" and place it several ALT-DOWNS under "Toggle 2". Now select EXIT form the 'Attr' strip. Call the other 'Exit_2' and give it text of "Exit 2" and place it one ALT-DOWN beneath "Exit 1". How about making a CANCEL button? And we want an ENTER button, too. Create a button called 'Okay' and make its' text "Okay". Position it in the upper middle of the screen. Select an attribute of ENTER. This is going to be a default button, so let's graphically indicate that by pressing '+' a few times, thickening the border. Create a button called 'Cancel' and give it text of "Cancel". Position it below "Okay" a few ALT-DOWNS. Select the attribute of CANCEL. Also, press '-' a few times to get rid of the thicker border. Make it one pixel thick, like the others. DETAILS! Where's the titles? How about creating a button called 'Radio_title' with text of "RADIO". Place and center this button above the radio buttons. Remember the example? Select the DEAD attribute. This is just for display. Create a button named 'Toggle_title'. For a text line, let's use a special Atari ST character not found on the keyboard. How? Select STRING. Delete what's there now. Type CONTROL-A. Enter the digit 4. Press a cursor key. There's the RIGHT ARROW symbol, whose ST-ASCII code is 4. Continue to type in "Toggle". Position the button to the right of the toggle buttons. Create a button called 'Exit_title' and give its' text line as in toggles', only type in "Exit" instead of "Toggle". The attribute is still DEAD. Shapes and fill patterns. No sweat. How about this. We box in each radio group, then box in the two groups plus the radio title. Select BOX to do that. Start a box corner with mouse right, finish the other corner with mouse left. If you don't like it, press UNDO and whatever the last shape is, it will be deleted (fill pattern counts as a shape). Fill in a pattern between the two small boxes and the big box. Select fill. Then, select a pattern with the right mouse button, start filling with the left mouse button at the appropriate mouse coordinates. How about boxes around TOGGLE and EXIT. Do you remember the example? You can do it. That covers the editing. One more thing. To delete a button, you must activate it by either right-mouse clicking on it and laying it down, or by pressing return when the mouse arrow is on top of the button. Then press delete. That offensive button has now gone away. Now we are going to save it. Do you want to check all the attributes and stuff first? Did you make mistakes? Go to each button with the mouse arrow on top of it, press return, and look at the strip menu options. If you made a mistake, simply change it. Wnat to check its' name? Select RENAME. Just Return if correct, or edit if it's a mistake. OKAY! Everything is good. SAVE it. Select SAVE. Enter the dialog box name of 'Example_box_1'. Return. Save it as EXAMPLE1.LST (always use .LST). NOW TO TEST: Load BOXTEST.BAS from the GFA interpreter. MERGE your EXAMPLE1.LST file. CHANGE the name of "Yourbox" to "Example_box_1". Run it! It BETTER work, right? GOOD! It works..... Now let's INTERFACE it! Let's write our own, short program that tests for the various buttons. First, MERGE EXAMPLE.LST or EXAMPLE1.LST. Now, merge in DRAW_BTN.BAS. Next, we'll write a DO-LOOP. Let's exit if we select the button called 'Exit_2'. Otherwise we print the buttons chosen and loop around, feeding back what our previous choice was. Do Cls @Example_box (A$,*A$) !Notice,going IN(A$) Cls ' automatically will be set to ' coming out(*A$). If Instr(A$,"(Radio_a_1)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_a_1' selected? Print "RADIO A 1" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Radio_a_2)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_a_2' selected? Print "Radio A 2" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Radio_a_3)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_a_3' selected? Print "RADIO A 3" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Radio_a_4)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_a_4' selected? Print "RADIO A 4" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Radio_b_1)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_b_1' selected? Print "RADIO B 1" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Radio_b_2)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_b_2' selected? Print "RADIO B 2" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Radio_b_3)")>0 ! Is 'Radio_b_3' selected? Print "RADIO B 3" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Toggle_1)")>0 ! Is 'Toggle_1' selected? Print "TOGGLE 1" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Toggle_2)")>0 ! Is 'Toggle_2' selected? Print "TOGGLE 2" Endif ' If Instr(A$,"(Exit_1)")>0 ! Is 'Exit_1' selected? Print "Exit_1" Endif ' Exit If Instr(A$,"(Exit_2)")>0 ! If 'Exit_2' selected,end! Loop EXPERIMENT!