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B L A C K B O A R D Copyright 1991, Jeff Napier & Another Company BLACKBOARD is for everyone who has something to say. If you can teach cooking, volleyball, lawn mower repair, trombone lessons, or even create a fanciful tutorial about the creatures of the planet Clark-7, you can create a disk that will be seen by hundreds of thousands of shareware users. Of course you can use it to create an in-house training disk or a retail product, too. BLACKBOARD was carefully designed to suit the largest possible audience using high-resolution CGA mode so that most IBM-compatibles can display your creations. It will work with VGA, EGA, CGA, Tandy, laptop and other computers. BLACKBOARD is a multi-media program incorporating sound effects, music, pictures and text all in ASCII-VECTOR- GRAPHICS, so large amounts of information can be put on a single disk. FEATURES Features of this very special ASCII vector graphics drawing and tutorial creating program: * Author can combine text and graphics easily on-screen. This is definitely a "what you see is what you get" environment. * Graphics files are very small on disk - tutorials can contain more than 100 graphics screens on one 360k floppy disk! * Using ASCII text files to store graphics commands and vectors means the end user search for any text within any picture - an automated index. * Sound effects and music composition are easily be incorporated into any presentation. * This program package uses high-res monochrome CGA graphics, a seldom seen format that allows the greatest variety of IBM-compatible computers to display finished products, yet maintaining a relatively high-quality resolution. User can select background color, giving the illusion of color graphics on CGA, EGA or VGA monitors. * Package includes two run-time programs. One is for use in batch files or special applications where display of one picture is desirable. The other allows the end user a full array of controls in viewing pictures. * This is a Multi-media package. Tutorials can include text, graphics, music, sound effects and some animation. * Full screen is available for drawing, menu is another full-screen overlay. No scrolling necessary. * Some tools from sophisticated drafting programs are included such as "grid" and "coordinates." Again, because of the ASCII file format, minute adjustments in finished products can be made. * This program provides the possibility that anyone with some knowledge to share can gain acclaim for their ideas or gain financially through the wonderful world of shareware. Unlike writing a paper-based book, you don't need to 'find' a publisher or spend tons of your own money on printing and advertising. Getting your shareware publication to hundreds of thousands of readers is quite easy. Simply make copies of your disk, and send them to some shareware distributors or upload to some bulletin boards. For proof, look to BICYCLE TUNE-UP AND REPAIR and OXY-ACETYLENE WELDING TUTORIAL - both successful shareware products. They were created with an early version of this very program package! _____________________________________________________________ REQUIREMENTS For display of finished products: (SHOW.EXE & DISPLAY.EXE) ================================= MOUSE: not required. RAM: 256k or more COMPUTER: PC, XT or better. DISPLAY: CGA, EGA or VGA. Hercules with CGA emulation ok. Monochrome & LCD ok. DRIVES: One floppy. For Creation: (BLACKBOARD - BB.EXE) ============= MOUSE: 2-button or 3-button. RAM: 512K or more DRIVES: 2-360k floppies or 1-720k or better, hard disk recommended but not required. COMPUTER: PC or XT-compatible. AT (286) or better recommended but not required. DISPLAY: CGA, EGA or VGA. Hercules with CGA emulation ok. Monochrome & LCD ok. _____________________________________________________________ The Files on the Disk BB.EXE - BLACKBOARD, main program SHOW.EXE - The main runtime display program DISPLAY.EXE - Limited display program HELP.0 through HELP.29 - Help files used by BB.EXE (These files are not necessary for operation of BB) BEGIN.BAT - To jump right in. BB.DOC - The instructions for using BLACKBOARD, which you are now reading. GOTO - An example file. _____________________________________________________________ LICENSE Distribution of the complete shareware package without modification or deletion is ok. In fact, we appreciate it! Shareware distributors and sysops may consider this document as official permission to distribute this package. For non-commercial home use, registration is requested but not required. Price $9.95 A license is required to use BLACKBOARD for creation of products. Any distribution of SHOW.EXE or DISPLAY.EXE without the rest of the package or without a license is illegal. This includes distribution of your product as shareware, in-house or in-school, retail material or otherwise. Licensing is easy and inexpensive. Price: Home-use: $9.95. One-Product Distribution License: $29.95. One-Author, Unlimited Number of Products license: $99.95. Distribution may begin as soon as your check is in the mail. Send to: ANOTHER COMPANY P.O. Box 298 Applegate, OR 97530 _____________________________________________________________ A Couple Of Quick Notes: 1. Like any big program, there will be much confusion about the use of this program. This is natural. The best way to avoid frustration is to experiment, experiment, experiment, before you place yourself under any deadlines to develop a finished product. 2. Make a back-up copy of the BLACKBOARD files. Then, if anything happens to your working disk, you'll have another copy. _____________________________________________________________ TO BEGIN Before you can display drawings, you must create some. We'll start with BB.EXE, (also known as BLACKBOARD) the creating program. To start BLACKBOARD, first make sure your mouse driver program is installed. Type BB and press <Enter>. You will be asked for a filename. Use any legal DOS filename. (up to 8 characters, optionally followed by a period, then up to 3 more) The program may flash a menu, called the "control panel," then go totally blank. That's ok, because no picture has been created yet and so it is displaying what you have created - nothing. Press the right mouse button to bring back the control panel (main menu). Optionally, at the DOS prompt, you can type BB, then press the spacebar, then type the name of an already existing picture. BB will automatically load that picture when it starts. _____________________________________________________________ CONVENTIONS Throughout the use of this program these conventions apply: The right mouse button: brings back the control panel or finishes an object or answers N or negative to a question. FOR ONLINE HELP: Point to any item on the control panel. Then click the right mouse button. Then click any button to return to the control panel. The left mouse button: Selects an option from the control panel or restarts a drawing object or answers a question affirmatively. The center button: is seldom used. It's purpose is to drag lines around within the picture. If you have a two-button mouse, you can toggle the center-button effect with the spacebar on your keyboard. The program is constantly saving your drawn objects (or parts of your picture) to disk. Therefore, you will find this program sort of weird if you are used to other drawing programs. The program works best with a hard disk for this reason, otherwise it will work ok, but it will be slower. If a window pops up that asks a question followed by 'Y/N', press the left mouse button to answer yes, the right mouse button to answer no. Most other drawing programs do not allow the full use of the monitor because some of the screen area is taken up with the program menu. Typically the left edge and the bottom. When drawing for disk-based applications, this is annoying or worse. Therefore, this program allows full-screen drawing. The control panel (main menu) is totally hidden when not needed, then pops up to full-screen size when you do need it. REMEMBER: Click the right mouse button from within most operations to bring back the main control panel. _____________________________________________________________ THE CONTROL PANEL Let's go over the control panel option by option: QUIT In the upper left corner is 'DOS'. Selecting this option with the left mouse button exits to DOS. You don't have to save your file when you exit, because every item you create is saved to disk as it is drawn. REDRAW Second from left, top row is REDRAW. This is the most-often selected option. After awhile, especially with older mouse drivers, the image on the screen gets pretty well wrecked. Select REDRAW with the left mouse button to rewrite the picture onto the screen. REDRAW is WYSIWYG. (What You See Is What You Get). Selecting this option will show you exactly what the end user will see, sound effects and all. NOTE Next to REDRAW is NOTE. Selection of this option places a secret note in the ASCII disk file that doesn't show up in the picture. This is useful if you want to mark places in the ASCII file. For instance, let's say you have created a rather elaborate face, then you want to start drawing a hand. You might enter a note that says "start hand here." Then, later, if you don't like the hand you've drawn, you can eliminate everything south of your note. UNDO Next to NOTE is UNDO. Select this option with the left mouse button and the last thing added to the drawing will be eliminated from the disk-based file and the picture will be redrawn. Sometimes it is subtle. For instance, if you made several lines, and the last one was a small one then only the last line will be eliminated - so the picture will look nearly the same. In some cases, UNDO only undoes a blank line at the end of the file and therefore must be selected twice in order to get a result. You can use UNDO over and over again to undo as far back into your file as you like. When UNDOing TEXT, one line will be removed at a time. UNDO automatically creates a backup file called WORKFILE.BAK." You can rename or copy WORKFILE.BAK if you have UNDOne too much, or otherwise wrecked the main picture file. NOTE: Make sure you always have at lease twice as much free space on your disk as the size of the picture file you are creating. BLOCK COMMANDS: COPY, MOVE AND BLOCK DELETE Further right, along the top row of the control panel we have several block commands. Click the left mouse button to select COPY. Then you can enlarge and shape a rectangle by pressing the right mouse button or move the rectangle with no mouse button held, and enclose anything on the screen. When the left mouse button is clicked, the contents of the rectangle can be moved to another location. Another click of the left button will 'set' the copy in the chosen location. MOVE works the same way, but deletes the contents of the rectangle from its original location. BLOCK DELETE simply blacks out the contents of the rectangle. BUILD Build is the heart of the system. This is where you take your collection of pictures and BUILD them into a presentation. Select BUILD from the control panel with a click of the left mouse button. You will then face a screen that has a column of numbers on the left and some instructions on the right. You can build a presentation of from 1 to 180 picture files. If your presentation was 13 pictures, in files called, ANTIQUE.A ANTIQUE.B, and so on through ANTIQUE.M, for instance, you would write the name of the file containing the first picture next to the number 1. To do this, use the up or the down arrow key to move the highlighted area to the 1 : . Then use the backspace ([Bksp]) key to delete whatever is by the 1 : presently. Then you would type in ANTIQUE.A. If there is a file name by the 2 : delete that file name and type in ANTIQUE.B. You would continue all the way through 13 : where you would put ANTIQUE.M. If there was a file name by 14 : , you would delete that, but put nothing in it's place. And delete all the subsequent files. Then, when done, press the escape key ([Esc]). Your picture files must be on the same disk and in the same directory as BB.EXE. Do not use drive or path designators. For instance, you can't use c:\ANTIQUES\ANTIQUE.A with BUILD. The program asks if you want to see the presentation. Answer 'Y' with a click of the left mouse button to see the presentation just as an end user would see it when they use SHOW.EXE. The only differences are that some of the SHOW.EXE features are blocked out from BLACKBOARD such as GOTO. This is because they are not useful until your presentation is completed. The mouse is deactivated during the presentation. Use the keyboard to operate. Use HELP to find out about the presentation's features. Use QUIT to return to the main program. FREEHAND DRAWING Now, moving to the second row, leftmost box of the control panel, you will see a squiggle. This represents freehand drawing. Use freehand sparingly. It uses a lot of disk space. To use the freehand option, press the left mouse button when you want to draw. Click the right mouse button when done. A box will appear on your drawing asking if you want to "Accept" the freehand. If so, click the left mouse button. If not, click the right mouse button and the freehand portion will be not be saved to disk. LINE Next on the control panel we have a straight line. Select it with a click of the left mouse button. Move the mouse pointer until it is where you want a line to start. Then click the left mouse button. Move the mouse until the line is as you like it, then tap the left button again. If you don't like the line, click the right button. To draw another line, click the left button again. To return to the control panel, click the right button twice. If you are making a line, but you are not satisfied with it's overall position, you can drag it to another location while holding the center mouse button! If you have a two button mouse, you can press the spacebar of your keyboard to toggle 'line move' or 'line size.' (Try it!) To make curves or seemingly freehand lines, instead make a series of very short lines. This increases drawing accuracy tremendously. RECTANGLE Next to the line option is the rectangle option. It works almost the same as line drawing. Select this option from the control panel with a click of the left mouse button. Move the rectangle on the picture by moving the mouse when no buttons are pressed. Hold the right mouse button and move the mouse to change the size and shape of the rectangle. Click the left mouse button when you are satisfied with the size, shape and location of your rectangle. Now you can click the left mouse button to draw another rectangle, or the right button to return to the control panel. CIRCLE Next to the rectangle is the circle option. Use the left button to select circles, then hold the right button and move the mouse up or down to change a circle's size. Press the left button to make a circle permanent. You can then press the left mouse button to draw another circle, or the right button to return to the control panel. ELLIPSE (And ARCS) To the right of the circle option on the control panel is ELLIPSE. Select this option with the left mouse button. A window will open asking something like ('F/T/B/L/R/N?) You must press <F> on the keyboard if you want a full ellipse, <T> if you only want the top half, <B> for the bottom half, <L> for left half or <R> for right half. <N> is for numeric, where you pick the number of degrees you want drawn. Ellipses are drawn in the same manner as circles, except you must place ellipses before you size them. FILL The next item to the right of the ellipse option appears to be another rectangle. This is the way to fill closed spaces with a pattern. The standard pattern is solid white, but there are other choices available. To fill an enclosed area, such as a circle, rectangle or polygon, select this option with a click of the left mouse button then move the pointer into the area to be filled. Click the left mouse button again and the area will fill with the pattern. A box will appear on the screen asking if you accept the fill. If so, click the left mouse button and the fill will become permanent. If not, click the right mouse button and the picture will be repaired. This option requires that areas be totally surrounded. If even one pixel is missing from the outline of a polygon, the "fill" will leak out and possibly fill the whole picture! TEXT Then we have text. When you select this option, you must first locate and size a rectangle on the screen. Use the right mouse button to size this rectangle, and the left button to energize it. Then use the keyboard to enter text. Unlike any other drawing program I have seen, the text automatically wraps within the rectangle. (Do not press the [Enter] key.) When done, press the [Esc] key to tell the program that you are done entering text. This is important: YOU MUST PRESS THE ESCAPE [Esc] KEY OR [ENTER] WHEN DONE ENTERING TEXT. The standard mode of operation is left justification (like a typewriter). You can also select left & right justification (like a word processor). See "Set Options." If you have made a mistake in placement of your text rectangle, you can use the backspace key to delete all text, then press [Esc] to quit the text block. Then click the right mouse button to return to the control panel, or click the left button to place text again. ************************************************************* YOU MUST PRESS THE ESCAPE [Esc] KEY WHEN DONE ENTERING TEXT. ************************************************************* IMPORT A good plan (one of many) for creating a text and graphics tutorial is to use an ordinary word processor to create an outline first. Then develop your outline into the text as it will appear in your tutorial. Leave the pictures for last. Instead of retyping everything, you can import the text you have already created into BLACKBOARD pictures. The text must be in ordinary ASCII mode. Virtually all word processors can create ASCII text, because it is the universal standard, but many word processors in their normal mode, create unusual text that cannot be used directly by DOS applications. So you must use the ASCII mode. See your word processing program's instruction manual for details. Break your finished text into blocks the size you will want to appear in your pictures, then move each block into a separate file. These blocks can be no larger than 70 characters wide and 19 lines long. To the right of the TEXT option is IMPORT TEXT. When selected, you are prompted for a filename. Then, a rectangle will appear which is the size of the block of text within that file. Obviously, then, the file should first be checked to be sure that it is smaller than the area of the screen you want to fill. BIG TEXT Moving down to the next line on the control panel, you'll note that the leftmost box contains a medium size letter B. This represents bigger text. This is for subtitles. This feature is not as powerful as the previous text option. You can only enter one line of characters at a time. When selected with a click of the left mouse button, you are prompted to enter from the keyboard "L/C/R". Press <L> if you want the line left justified, <C> for center justified and <R> for right justified. Then you must select a place to start the text. Click the left button to energize the spot, then type your text, then press the <Enter> key when done. You will be asked "Accept? y/n." Use the left mouse button to accept, the right to abandon. The big text option temporarily wipes out a large area of the picture on the screen. It will come back if you select the REDRAW option. If you want to center a line of text, watch the coordinate display in the lower left corner. It will say 320,100 when you are in the exact center of the picture. To the left of the medium B is a larger B. This is simply a bigger font. These fonts look particularly good if you put a space between each letter, and three spaces between words. L i k e T h i s. LINE WIDTH The next box of the control panel contains two horizontal lines. Clicking the left mouse button while the pointer is in the lower half of this box will cause all subsequent lines, circles, ellipses and rectangles to be drawn with wide lines. Clicking the upper half of this box will cause these objects to be drawn with thin lines. (Note: circles and ellipses are cumbersome when drawn with the wide line style. Therefore, you might want to draw circles and ellipses with the skinny line width, then change the width later.) PATTERNS Then next box is interesting. Clicking the left mouse button with the pointer in any one of these four patterns will cause that to be the current fill pattern. Then you can go to the fill box (third from the right in the second row), and select to fill an object. Place the pointer within a circle, rectangle or polygon and click the left button. The object will fill with the pattern. You will be prompted with "Accept? y/n." Clicking the left button will accept the pattern and write it to the ASCII disk file. Clicking the right button will not write the fill to disk, and repair the picture. If you accidentally fill a polygon that is not entirely closed - and only one unlit pixel will do it, the whole picture will fill with pattern. When asked, "Accept? (y/n)" say no with the right button. FATBIT EDITING The next box on the menu is the FATBIT editor. Use this to do fine touch up to your pictures. Selecting this option will allow you to bring a box (which size cannot be adjusted) around a portion of your picture. Then you get an enlargement of that portion which you can modify pixel by pixel. Use the left button to change any pixel to its opposite color. Click the right button when done. Two notes here: Oddly, you cannot change the same pixel twice in a row. You must change another, then return to the one you want to change back. The other note: Use this option judiciously, it uses a lot of disk space in the ASCII file. (approximately 10 bytes per each pixel change). Using fatbit editing you can create very professional artistic effects such as shading, fading and highlighting. MAIN The next option on the control panel is MAIN. This simply puts a full-screen border around your picture. This effect makes all-text pictures look more inviting. FILE The next option on the control panel is FILE. Use this to edit another picture. Click the left mouse button to select FILE. Then type the name of the next picture file you want to edit. You can select a previously created picture or start a new one. Any DOS filename is legal with up to 8 letters, optionally followed by a period and three more letters. You can also precede filenames with drive and path designators. For instance: C:\PICTURES\COMPUTER.1. ADD The next option on the control panel is ADD. You can merge two pictures with this option. If you have, lets say, a landscape in one file, you can create a new file with a picture of a cow, then ADD the landscape backdrop. From this point forward, the cow picture will also contain the landscape. Hints: 1. Make standard picture pieces that you can use over and over again. For instance, if you are writing a tutorial about raising cattle, you might draw a picture of a cow facing you and another facing sideways. You could call these pictures FRONT.COW and SIDE.COW. Then, simply draw your backgrounds, add the proper cow, write your text, and you have a completed picture. 2. You might want to have a small picture element in another location on the screen. Therefore, start a new picture, but before you do any drawing, add your cow first. Let's say that the cow is in the middle of the screen, but you want it at the bottom. Simple. Simply use MOVE to move it before adding anything else to the picture. Add also works with sound files. You can create a sound (see the sound option) and add it to any file if you want that music or sound effect to occur when that file is displayed. COORDINATE DISPLAY Now, down to the leftmost box in the bottom row of the control panel. CORD toggles the coordinate display in the lower left corner. If it is in your way, select CORD to get rid of it. (Note, the coordinate display doesn't actually disappear until you then select REDRAW.) Select CORD again if you want the coordinate display again. Use of coordinates ensures that your lines will be straight and your pictures can be in proper proportion. The location 0,0 is the upper left corner of the screen, and 639,199 is the lower right. The first number is the horizontal position and the second number is the vertical position. The middle of the screen is 320,100. GRID Next on the control panel is GRID. With this feature you can turn a temporary grid display on and off. You will be prompted for the number of pixels between dots. 9 is a good answer. A grid allows you to precisely align objects in your picture. The grid does not appear in the finished product. Use the REDRAW option to repair a grid that has been overdrawn. COLOR The control panel item, COLOR, is only for the artist's pleasure. You can change the background color, but the finished product is displayed in black & white or whatever color the the SHOW.EXE user selects. SET OPTIONS SET OPTIONS only has one function in this first version of BLACKBOARD. Use this to switch text mode from plain word wrap to right justification. SOUND Selecting this option with the left mouse button brings a new menu of sound options. Some items on the menu are pre-designed sounds such as TWINKLE and BOMB DROP. Select a sound with a click of the left mouse button. Some of the effects can run as long as you want up to one minute. You will be asked for a time in milliseconds. 1000 milliseconds = 1 second. Some long sound effects such as NOISE, BOMB DROP, and LIQUID take up lots of disk space. You can also select a sub-menu for CUSTOM sound making or MUSIC composition. In the MUSIC option, use the left mouse button to select notes, durations, rests, attacks or menu items. Select QUIT from the menu at the lower left when done. To return from the SOUND menu, select MAIN MENU. The sound timing works nearly the same on all computers from 8086's to '486's. Consider the timing of your music. The usual place to add long sound effects, such as a melody is at the end of a picture, so the whole picture will be drawn, before the computer stops to play the music. Another way to do it, however, is to have the music appear at a key moment in the scene, then have the rest of the picture appear after the music. Sound effects combined with WAIT FOR USER can be rather striking. There is a limit of approximately 3000 sounds, or notes in a single composition. You can make longer effects or melodies, by choosing SOUND twice in a row, but the computer may stop to read the disk in an unusual location in compositions of over 3000 steps. WAIT FOR USER Selecting this option with the left mouse button seems to have no effect. But it definitely does do something. It puts a temporary stop in your picture. Until the user presses any key, the rest of the picture remains undrawn. This effect will occur, too, anytime the picture is redrawn within BLACKBOARD. You may think the computer broke, because everything stops before your picture is complete, but all you have to do is press any key. If you use this option, make sure to put a note within your picture telling the user to "Press any key to continue." This is a good way to bring attention to a detail in a drawing. You make the detail, then select WAIT FOR USER, then draw the rest of the picture. This works well when used right before a BLOCK DELETE to clear part or all of the screen and then draw something new within the cleared space. DELAY Use this option for building animation. It works well in combination with MOVE. Delays are measured in microseconds. To animate, you would make a picture, then add a delay. Twenty to 70 milliseconds seems to work well. Then use the move option to move one or more elements in your picture. Then add another delay, etc. Each movement should be small. Similarly, lines can grow, or dots can slowly appear, by placing delays between each addition. Delays of less than 20 milliseconds will appear to play at different rates of speed on '386's and '486's compared to '8086's, so longer delays are recommended. Short delays and large movements will be lost on LCD (laptop) displays. For the laptop market, you should make your animations move slowly. Try to limit the actual amount of area that moves each time, because the nature of computer animation is that large changes take the computer a long time to 'figure out.' You can LAYER on a line to follow with your animated object. You can also use the GRID option so each movement can be a precise amount. LAYER The last item on the control panel is layer. This is like the ADD feature, but the file added is only on screen, and not added to the disk based file. When you are done creating a picture with another layered onto it, the end product will not contain anything from the layered one picture. This can be used like a light blue pencil is used in paste-up work. Make templates so you can carefully construct your picture, then in the final result, the LAYERed on template is gone. HELP Remember, you can always get help on any control panel item by pointing to it with the mouse, then clicking the right button. If your disk space is limited, you can delete all the help files and the program will still work fine, but help won't be available. _____________________________________________________________ EDITING (Optional) If you have been experimenting, by now you have put some mistakes in the picture and don't want to UNDO all the way back to a mistake. Large-scale changing or erasing or careful fine-tuning is simple. Use any ASCII editor to make changes to the ASCII file. If you have a TSR editor, such as SIDEKICK, all the better, because you can make changes directly in the ASCII file on the fly. Load (with SIDEKICK press [F3]) the filename of the picture you are working on, then make your changes. Save the file, drop out of your TSR and select REDRAW to see what your change has done. In fact, once you get used to it, using a TSR editor seems adds an incredible new dimension of fine-tuning to computer art, because you can make excellent adjustments to your pictures to achieve perfection. You can also edit the file to reduce file size and to make changes quickly, more quickly and precisely than bit-mapped editing! It may take some experimenting to understand all of what's happening in the ASCII file. Briefly: Most numbers are found in pairs, a horizontal coordinate, followed by a vertical one. The upper left corner of the screen is 0/0. The right hand edge is 639 and the bottom edge is 199. So, the lower right corner is 639/199. An R followed by numbers will create a rectangle. The first pair will locate the upper left corner and the second pair will be for the lower right corner. A L is for line. A C is for Circle. The first two numbers are the location of its center, the last is the radius. An E is for ellipse. (and arcs) The first two numbers are the location of its center, the next two are the starting angle and ending angle in degrees, and the last two are length of its horizontal and vertical axes. A P addresses one pixel at the listed coordinates. If the third number following a P is 1 then that specific pixel will be white. A 0 will set the pixel to background color. F is a fill, the area containing the listed coordinates will be flooded with white. Text will be followed by two numbers, the horizontal and vertical coordinate of the upper left corner of the first letter. You can edit text just as you would in standard word processing. The first line after a block of text must start with a ~. This tells the program that the text ends and more graphics follows. The code, style1 or style3 changes line thickness. D, for DELAY, will be followed by only one number, the number of microseconds the delay is to last. U, on a line all by itself, is the code for WAIT FOR USER. Eliminate this line if you want to take a wait out of the picture. Sounds start with an S, and are followed by two numbers, the pitch and the duration. Pitch is measured in hertz and duration in milliseconds. Always put a blank line after your last sound statement. The computer reads a series of sounds before playing them. This way, it won't be caught trying to play a sound and reading the disk drive at the same time, which would stall the music or sound effect for a while. It needs the blank line to know where a series of sound statements ends. CASE is important. In other words R0/0/639/199 will put the largest possible rectangle on the screen, but r0/0/639/199 will do nothing, because the program expects a capital R. Do not exceed the parameters of the screen. You can't make a rectangle: R/-4/100/250/790, for instance, because it isn't within the CGA dimensions of 0/0-639/199. _____________________________________________________________ FOR THE END USER After you have created pictures, you should make an easy way for the user to view them. We have provided a choice of two programs for that purpose. DISPLAY DISPLAY.EXE is a very small and simple program that will show one picture until any key is pressed on the keyboard. To use it, type DISPLAY, then press the spacebar once, then type the exact name of the picture file you want displayed. DISPLAY is powerful when used with batch files. You could create a batch file that would use DISPLAY over and over again to display a series of pictures you have created. Let's say you have a company that sells farm equipment. You could create a simple catalog disk that displays pictures you have made showing some of your equipment for sale. You could have a file called GO.BAT that might look something like this: DISPLAY TRACTOR DISPLAY MOWER.1 DISPLAY MOWER.2 DISPLAY MOWER.3 DISPLAY SPREADER.A DISPLAY SPREADER.B DISPLAY PRICES.LST Then when the customer gets your catalog disk, and types GO, one after another, as the user presses any key, the various items will be displayed. SHOW.EXE This is the powerful display program. This one is like DISPLAY, but allows the user to go back to view a previous picture, find any text within the pictures, change the on-screen colors and more. This one displays a menu bar at the bottom of the screen, requiring the last 12 rows of pixels, so make your pictures with no important elements below vertical coordinate 188. SHOW is easy to configure for your presentation. Use the BUILD option from the control panel of BLACKBOARD. The BUILD option allows you to line up the picture files as you want in the order you want the end user to see them. Instructions are built into the program. BUILD creates a file on disk called SHOW.CFG. When the end user starts SHOW.EXE, the program reads SHOW.CFG to see what files it is to present. GOTO If you use SHOW you have the option of using a GOTO picture. This is created like any other picture with BLACKBOARD, but is a numbered list of some key points in your tutorial. It is like a table of contents. The end user can type a number, press [Enter] and be taken to the place indicated by the goto file. There is an example GOTO file on this disk. The example is from the BICYCLE TUNE-UP AND REPAIR tutorial, and has no connection to anything on this disk. It is merely provided as an example. The number that you list with each entry is the actual number in the sequence of pictures as they will be displayed by SHOW.EXE. In other words, if the fourth picture is the beginning of a chapter about GUITARS, and the 11th picture is the beginning of the part about pianos, then your GOTO should end up looking something like this: 4. GUITARS 11. PIANOS You can put any artwork and any text you like in the GOTO picture. You might consider using the text that is at the top of the example picture so that the end user will have instructions to know what to do with the GOTO option. GOTO will not work if renamed. If you do not provide a GOTO file on your finished disk, when the GOTO option is selected by the end user, nothing happens. Make sure the goto chapter does not contain numbers higher than the total number of pictures in your tutorial. RESUME The first time SHOW.EXE is used, if the disk is not write protected, a file is created called RESUME. It contains the number of the last picture viewed by the user. This is so the user can "resume" where the tutorial was last studied. You can ignore the RESUME file. _____________________________________________________________ YOUR FINISHED PRODUCT If you are using SHOW.EXE, once you have created a tutorial, series of pictures, catalog, or training program, or whatever, you should put all your files on a master floppy disk. From this master you will make copies to send to your customers, to shareware distributors, sysops, etc. The floppy must contain: SHOW.EXE Your picture files SHOW.CFG Optionally: The file called GOTO A file called BEGIN.BAT or GO.BAT for beginners Advertising pictures to bring you more money HINT: You can rename SHOW.EXE BEGIN.EXE. Use the DOS command REN. Specifically you can type at the DOS prompt: REN SHOW.EXE BEGIN.EXE This way, the end user will know how to start your disk. Then, of course, make a copy of your master disk and test it extensively. PRINT A PICTURE Although BLACKBOARD was not specifically created as a drawing program, since it does that job so well, you may want to use it for a drawing then send the output to a printer. There is a way to do that. To print a picture, quit the program to get to the dos prompt. Load GRAPHICS.COM which is a small TSR program that comes with MS-DOS. (If your computer crashes, remove some other TSRs first.) Then run DISPLAY.EXE or BB.EXE and put the picture you want to print on the screen. While holding a shift key, press [Print Screen] key, and your picture will be printed. This will work on all dot, laser and other printers that do graphics. MAKING MONEY BLACKBOARD, if used properly, can be an excellent money-making tool, possibly it can launch you into a second career. The trick is shareware distribution. Here's what you have to do: Write a product that others will want to see. Your subject can be anything, but it is often easiest and best to write about what you know. If you are retired from the vacuum cleaner repair business, why not write a tutorial about vacuum repair for the public. Teach people how to mend their own hoses, and how to replace motor brushes. (Or whatever is done to vacuum cleaners) Write a second product, something that is similar to the first, but contains information people would want. For instance, if you also repaired sewing machines, your second disk could be about that. The second one will not be shareware. In the vacuum disk, the shareware one, you put an advertisement for you sewing machine disk. For instance, if people send you $19.95, you'll send them the "Complete Home Sewing Machine Repair Tutorial Disk." Make sure the title of the first disk is catchy. The title will cause shareware users to purchase or download your disk more than any other factor. In this initial purchase stage, title is actually more important than content. Keep your discussion and pictures lively. Many shareware users buy fistfulls of disks at a time. They don't necessarily respect every disk they have. Often they will start loading every one into the slot one after another, giving less than 5 minutes to each. Yours must grab their attention. They will throw it onto the good pile, and only later, when they come back to it will they give it their full attention and respect. So, your very first 100 words must be interesting and to the point. Send your disk to as many sysops and shareware distributors as you can. Another Company can help. We have a list of over 240 shareware distributors' addresses which we sell for $29.95. (send check to ANOTHER COMPANY, Box 298, Applegate, OR 97530. Specify "Shareware Distributors List" and whether you prefer 5.25" or 3.5" disk size.) Now, unless your disk has a totally unattractive title, hundreds of thousands of users will get it. Possibly millions. Lets say you wrote "Beginning Piano Lessons." There are 72 million IBM-compatible users just in America right now. Perhaps one in ten will eventually see your shareware listed somewhere. Of those 7,200,000 people, perhaps one in 10 will be interested in seeing a disk about piano lessons. Of those 720,000 people, maybe only one in 100 will want to go on to purchase your "Intermediate Piano Lessons" for $10. That's 7200 times $10, or $72,000! But that's not the end of the story. You can also write a disk called, "Advanced Piano Lessons," another called, "Music Composition & Theory," another called "Playing the Blues - Piano," another called, "Blues Harmonica" etc. You get the idea. Prices and audiences can vary. You may have a very specialized area of interest. How many people would be interested in designing swimming pools, for instance? But those who are, will have no other place to turn for information. You can sell your non-shareware disks for $100 each! The Reality While writing shareware is a 'get-rich at home' idea that is more likely than most to actually work, there are some realities to be discovered: * The inertia time in shareware can be long. Don't expect to make money tomorrow. After you send your disks to distributors, it may take them anywhere from a week to a whole year just to list your shareware in their catalogs. After users see your shareware, it may take them another year to get around to sending you money. The wind-down time is also long. Whatever mistakes you make in your shareware will be around to haunt you for years afterwards. If you have an 800 phone number, and if you offer technical advice to non-registered users, your ears will be burned out for the next five years. * Your first attempts may miss the mark in one way or another. Instead of making $72,000 from your first disk, you may end up with $400. The way to fix this problem is to keep writing. Make as many shareware and non-shareware disks as you can. * Like all home money-making ideas, there are many variables that can slow you down. Expect the worst, then be pleasantly surprised when things work out better. Don't quit your job yet. If you would like to learn more about this fascinating business, write for our text tutorial disk, SUCCESS WITH SHAREWARE! Send $19.95 to ANOTHER COMPANY, Box 298, Applegate, OR 97530. Please specify whether you prefer 5.25" or 3.5" disk size. _____________________________________________________________ THANK YOU Thank you for trying BLACKBOARD. We wish you great prosperity and fame (if that is your desire). We hope this program package can help you reach your goals. - Jeff - July 5, 1991 Attn Jeff Napier Another Company P.O. Box 298 Applegate, OR 97530 P.S. Please register: HOME-USE $9.95 To make a single product: $29.95 One-author, unlimited number of products: $99.95 (Any form of distribution of finished products without registration is illegal.)