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- (C) ADE Muffett, UCW Aberystwyth, 1991. "aem@aber.ac.uk" "...!ukc!aber!aem"
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- A Roadrunner>>>++>> production
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- Hello there.
- I bet you're wondering what I've been up to of late.
- On the other hand maybe you haven't.
- Perhaps you don't know about scrolling ".plan" files at all ?
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- You see (for those newcomers amongst you), a long time ago, two undergraduates
- here in Aberystwyth decided to have a 'war'.
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- They were (are) Alun Jones "alj8" and Kev Brooks "kkb9".
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- The war was over who could produce the 'prettiest' ".plan" file.
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- They fought tooth and nail, with many people watching on the sidelines.
- Letters scrolled on and off the screen, flashed at you, it was quite amusing.
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- But then one day, I saw one effort (Kev's) that was really appalling:
- A huge data file that flashed, flickered and grunged its way across the
- screen, and I thought to myself :- "I can do much better than that!"
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- I think that in retrospect I was right. 8)
- I sat down, and I wrote "ASP" :-
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- Alec's Scrolling Program: a description language for plan files
- - written in fairly portable C
- - with a nice simple syntax
- - and above all, pleasant and easy to use.
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- So - What can you do with ASP ? (I hear you scream)
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- (apart from flashing messages like this on and off of the screen)
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- .speed 20 .flash
- flashing
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- You can scroll a piece of text onto the screen line, either forwards...
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- ...or backwards onto the screen (just like this !)
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- Or what you have on the screen already can be scrolled off to the right ----->
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- <----------------- and ditto off to the left, as you might expect.
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- You can spatter bits of text onto the screen
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- and then just let them fade into nothingness....
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- Messages can be laid down letter by letter, from left to right;
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- ...and of course, ditto for messages right to left.
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- Then there is laying messages down from the middle to the ends of the screen
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- - and vice versa for messages, ends to middle.
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- .laymte
- really build up some these...
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- .layetm
- You can really build up some quite complex
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- .laymte .p .p .fade .wipe
- You can really build up some quite complex special effects with only these...
-
- .letter1
- but thats nothing compared to what you can do with the special text functions.
- BUT THATS NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH THE SPECIAL TEXT FUNCTIONS.
- But thats nothing compared to what you can do with the special text functions.
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- .letter2
- ESPECIALLY when YOU employ THE RANDOM-character-SEARCH macros.
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- .letter1
- especially WHEN you EMPLOY the random-CHARACTER-search MACROS.
- esPECIALLY when yoU emPLOY the random-chARACTER-sEARCH macros.
- ESPEcially wHEN YOu EMPloy THE RANDOM-character-SEarch macROS.
- especiALLY whEN you EMPLoy the ranDOM-CHARacter-seaRCH macROS.
- Especially when you employ the random-character-search macros.
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- But the thing that really "made it" in my mind, was animation.
- Foregrounds and backgrounds.
- The whole kaboodle.
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- And thus was born the Andalusian Video Snail:
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- .object \@_ 100 50 .anim .resetanim .p .p
- --
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- .object _@_ 50 50 .anim .resetanim .p
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- .object _@/ 50 100 .anim .resetanim .p .p
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- .tshow .p .p .clear
- And everyone copied it... Foo !
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- 8)
- Oh well. Back to the hack. See you again soon.
- ps: a copy of the asp source code for this plan can be found in the file
-
- .show \
- .object ----> 0 74 \
- .object <---- 74 0 \
- .anim .resetanim \
- .object ----> 0 74 \
- .object <---- 74 0 \
- .anim .resetanim \
- .show
- "demo3.asp" in the standard asp distribution.
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- Bye Now...
- Alec D.E. Muffett
- (c) 1991
-