Monster Media 1994 #1

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CONDOR PAINT Copyright 1994 by Larry Mears All Rights Reserved version 2.0 --------------------------------------------------------- ANY program that supports "EXTERNAL" ANSI (ANSI.SYS) already has __INSTANT__ Condor support built it! --------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: There is no gaurantee as to the performance of CONDOR PAINT. The user assumes ALL risks involved from the use of CONDOR PAINT. INDEX Description .................................................... 1 Using CPaint .................................................... 1 The MAIN Menu .................................................... 2 QUIT ............................................................ 2 FILE ............................................................ 2 NEW ............................................................ 3 COLOR ............................................................ 3 DRAW ............................................................ 4 POLY ............................................................ 4 FILL ............................................................ 4 CIRCLE .......................................................... 5 RECT .......................................................... 5 SOLIDS .......................................................... 5 TEXT .......................................................... 6 SOUND .......................................................... 6 UNDO .......................................................... 6 ZONES/ICONS....................................................... 7 EXTRA .......................................................... 8 CPaint Memory ................................................. 8 PAUSE .......................................................... 8 PLAY Graphic ................................................. 8 Position Cursor ................................................. 8 TEXT Area ....................................................... 8 COMMENTs ........................................................ 8 INPUT ........................................................... 8 MOVE / Animate .................................................. 9 IMPORT Text ..................................................... 10 TEXT FONT ....................................................... 11 DOS Shell ....................................................... 12 Distribution Rights ............................................ 13 - 1 - Condor Paint ( CPaint ) creates a ascii text file of graphic commands in the correct syntax required by the CONDOR.SYS con: device driver. CPaint requires that CONDOR.SYS be installed to function correctly. Since CPaint isn't simply altering screen memory it functions a little differently than other Paint programs you might use. What CPaint is doing for you is more complex, it makes a command for the action you selected from the menu & creates coordinates for that command from the mouse position. Erasing is accomplished by deleting (Undoing) the last command created. CPaint can now be used to create graphical "Point & Click" menus for use with DOS offline or as a BBS menu online, SEE the ZONEs entry. CPAINT.EXE will look for GFABASIC.OVL when ran, put this in the same directory as CPAINT.EXE or in a included directory in your PATH statement. You _MUST_ have a MOUSE to use CPaint. You can use CPaint to make online graphics, pictures, art, advertisements, comics, BBS menus, whatever you like. These graphics are displayable from DOS with just the TYPE command if the CONDOR.SYS is installed, really far out!!! CPaint will check your free memory and adjust it's buffer to that, the more free memory you have the bigger more detail CPaint pic you can create. CPaint may not be able to load and work with "any" CONDOR.SYS format graphic due to the limitations imposed by the language CPaint was written in, CPaint is intended to create and work with CONDOR files CPaint has created only. You can use a text editor and load CPaint files to hand edit. The CONDOR graphics script looks like a bunch of letters and numbers, if you refer to the CONDOR.DOC (the manual) you will be able to look these these letters (commands) up and see what CPaint is doing. A human is smarter than CPaint any day and can out do CPaint with a little effort and a text editor. The & loop command can provide a lot of punch but is to complex for CPaint to handle, but YOU can do it! You can do some really sharp work just using CPaint though. When CPaint is ran from DOS, not recomended to run from WINDOWS, you will get the title screen and a note about 2 BUTTON exit. A 2 BUTTON EXIT is simply this: PRESS and HOLD the right mouse button and while holding down the right mouse button also press the left mouse button then release both. This is used as a EXIT to the MAIN MENU in CPaint. From the title screen however just CLICK on the OK button. The next thing that confronts you is a RESOLUTION selection menu. You must select a resolution the abort won't work from here. The format for instance 320x200x256 means 320 pixels(dots) across ( know as the X coordinate ) and 200 pixels tall ( know as the Y coordinate ) and the last part means the number of colors, 256 in this example, 320x200x256 a VGA mode and requires a VGA graphics card. - 2 - The MAIN Menu will now come up. Here's a breakdown: QUIT - Exit CPaint, go back to DOS. FILE - Use this selection to LOAD a CPaint file or SAVE a CPAINT file. No backup files are created and if a file name exists already it will be over written without warning. When a file is loaded from here the current picture you are drawing will be wiped out. CPaint uses the filename.EXT to adjust IT's resolution. Don't load a file in that isn't the resolution "Rx:" that the filename.EXT says it is. For example the filname might be PICTURE.R13 but the file itself contain a esc{R18:...esc} It make CPaints menus screwy for sure! It's GFABasic it just doesn't check the resolution on the fly. I worked around it as best I could so I could use it's built in GUI commands. SAVE - This saves the graphic out. It will ask if you want to place a PAUSE at the end of the picture and then if you want to reset the screen to TEXT mode. You can also change the FONT on EXIT here. Try the 8x8 FONT for a 50 line text screen. X-SAVE is a eXtra save format. It saves CPaint files in a ONE-LINE buffer format. This is GOOD if you can't turn off a BBS's pause screenfulls every 25 lines or so, this format plus the "TEXT Area" option under the EXTRA entry from the MAIN menu can keep the BBS's PAUSE-PROMT from getting into CONDOR's buffer as commands and also limit the BBS pause prompt to the top line of the screen. X-Saving a file and then doing a normal SAVE on it will NOW restore a CPaint file to a SAVEd format state. BBS_Save is like X-SAVE somewhat but it AUTOMATICALLY adds a "s1:" command at the beginning of the graphic and uses ^ power or ~ tilde setup for the attention sequence. Some BBSs will strip out the escape character so this takes care of that. Use this format to POST a CONDOR graphic in a BBS message base. If you avoid drawing at the TOP of the screen, the first 16 pixels then the BBS pause prompt shouldn't cause any problems. This FORMAT works fine for posting graphic messages on GEnie. Note: BBS_SAVE and X-SAVE format graphics are slightly larger than the normal SAVE format and take longer to load into CPaint. The LOAD command rebuilds the SAVE format from the X-SAVE and BBS_SAVEd files so this takes a little time. HARDCOPY - Prints out your graphic to a printer. Be sure to select configure the first time you use it, the next time you run CPaint it will load your printer configuration in automatic. The EXIT command takes you back to the MAIN menu. - 3 - NEW - This allows you to start a new pic in a different resolution than the one selected when CPaint was first ran. The current picture will be wiped out, so remember to SAVE it from the file menu. You can select ABORT and go SAVE it first, or maybe you want to start with a clean screen and empty buffer in the same resolution in effect killing the drawing you were working on, the NEW option does this. COLOR - This alters the color you are working with and or changes a color to another from the color palette. The options can vary from this selection depending on the resolution you are using. A sub menu will pop up from this menu, then you select what you want to use the color for, POLY, LINES, FILLS, TEXT, or PALETTE to alter the color palette. After clicking on points, lines, fills, or text you will see a color bar, click on the color you want to use for the previous selected drawing operation. If you select PALETTE and are in a CGA mode you are given the option to alter FOREGROUND or BACKGROUND color. If you pick BACKGROUND then next click on the ALTER button till you get the color you want then click on OK. If you select FOREGROUND click on ALTER and then OK when it's what you want. In 2 color screen modes and modes 320x200x16 and 640x200x16 the PALETTE option has no effect. You can not change the Palette for these modes. In the EGA 640x350x16 and VGA 640x480x16 modes when you click on PALETTE you will get the options BORDER or SCREEN. If you select BORDER just CLICK on the ALTER button till you get the border(outer most screen edge) you like then click on OK. If you select SCREEN then click on the color in the color bar that you wish to ALTER, then click on ALTER over and over till you get what color you desire the click on OK. You have to still reselect COLOR from MAIN and tell what to use this new color for POINTS, LINES, FILLS, or TEXT. If you are using VGA mode 320x200x256 and select PALETTE you will see a mesh of 256 colors, click on the one you wish to alter, then you will see a slide bar CLICK on the BAR to adjust the color level. Press the RIGHT mouse button to toggle to RED, GREEN or BLUE. Click on OK when you get the color mixture you need or do the 2 button exit to abort. You still have to reselect the COLOR option from the MAIN menu tell CPaint what you want to use this new color for, POINTs, LINEs, FILLs, or Text. - 4 - DRAW - You select this function from the MAIN menu to draw lines. You should select COLOR first to set a COLOR for the lines you will be drawing. The draw routine is designed to draw lines in a flowing motion of the mouse, so sometimes it's a little cranky to get the line started. Move the mouse slightly then press the left button to anchor the line, now just move the mouse around till you get the other end point of the line where you want it and press the left mouse button to make the line permanent. Once you anchor a line down you can change the lines anchor point by hitting the right mouse button. To exit to the main menu you must use the 2 BUTTON EXIT: press and hold the right mouse button then while holding that button also press the left mouse button, then release both. POLY - This will plot a polymarker at the location of the mouse pointer when the left mouse button it pressed. You should use the COLOR option from the MAIN menu to set the color to use for the polymarkers you are plotting. DO NOT use this command to draw with, while it's possible it will make your picture really big and a lot slower. I would only use this to plot stars in the sky, or hit a few points where a FILL may have missed. The SET MARK option lets you select the polymarker shape to plot. Just click on the name of the one you want and move the mouse up and down to size it. The picture will be redisplayed after you finish this operation to clean up the screen. Use the 2 button exit to get back to the MAIN menu. FILL - This fills a area with the Fill COLOR you selected from the COLOR menu. The first four options are a border fill, you specify what you want to border the fill with. This is the CURRENTLY selected color for POINTs, LINEs, FILLs, or TEXT. This fill can leak out even if just ONE dot is missing in a border. ALL colors within the border are replaced with the current FILL color. The last option in the FILL MENU called "Interior Color" produces a different type of fill operation. This fill gets the color where the fill begins at and replaces ONLY that color with the currently selected FILL color. The range of this fill is to the edge of the color it is replacing. To FILL a area just select the BORDER type from the menu then click on the area to FILL. The FILL is one of CONDOR's weak points right, now. If speed is real important use the lower 320x200 resolutions, another option to gain faster fills in higher resolutions is the FAST TEXT BLOCK option from the FILL MENU. It will make a RECTANGLE using the current fill color really fast, then use the slower BORDER or INTERIOR fills to catch the rough edges. Eventually I hope to add some CUSTOM graphics routines to speed this up, maybe 5 to 10 times faster if I can pull it off. Use the 2 button exit to go back to the MAIN menu. - 5 - CIRCLE - This pulls up a menu with 2 options, Condor Circles and Plotted Ovals. The Condor Circle's color is determined by what color is selected for LINEs, although if you are drawing a disc the interior color is the selected FILL color. Condor Circles are done internally take just a few bytes to produce and are draw very fast, their drawback is that there is no aspect ratio, so the best looking Condor Circles drawn will be in the 320x200 and 640x480 screen resolutions. I tried real hard to include aspect ratios but dos would always lock up! The other option Plotted OVALS will produce a OVAL and there by you can have perfect circles in any mode with this command. The color of the PLOTTED Oval is the color you select from the color MENU for POINTs. Plotted Ovals are just that CPAINT does all the math to figure out the coordinates for each point plotted and produces a CONDOR Plot command for each one. This is slow but fast online because the math is already done, BUT it is very memory hungry and if the Oval is large the CPaint picture will be very large and that means time. The Plotted Oval command should be used only if absolutely needed! After you select the type of circle you want to draw just move the mouse arrow around and click the left mouse button to anchor the center of the circle, then move your mouse up and down to set the diameter of the circle. When you get the size circle you want click on the left mouse button to make the circle permanent. If you click the right mouse button you can reposition the center of the circle. To abort or exit the the circle drawing do a 2 button exit. RECT - RECTANGLES This will first pull up a menu with 2 options. With the first option "PIXELS" you move the mouse arrow then click the left button to anchor the upper left corner of the rectangle, then you stretch a rectangle to the size you need and click the left mouse button again to make it permanent. A right mouse button click will allow you to reposition the upper left corner of the rectangle. You do the 2 button exit to get back to the main menu. The color of the PIXEL rectangle is determined by the current LINE color. If you are drawing a SOLID rectangle the interior color is the current FILL color. The second option for rectangle is the "CHARACTER" option. When you click on this you will see a text information line in upper left section of the screen. Move your mouse left and right to obtain the ASCII character you want to make the rectangle with then click the left mouse button. Move the mouse to put the upper left corner of the rectangle where you want it then click the left mouse button. Now move the mouse right, left, up, down to see the four corners of the rectangle. When you get it the size you want press the left mouse button. It will draw a rectanglar area consisting of the character you chose. This command is great to FILL a large area FAST! The ASCII character number 219 is great for this. You can use the slower graphic fill command to catch the edges. To go to the MAIN menu do a 2 button exit. SOLIDS - This menu entry selects whether a rectangle or circle will be filled using with the current fill color, after a circle or rectangle is draw using the current line color. The Plotted Oval is not affect by this setting and the default setting is HOLLOW at startup. Just click the left mouse button on the setting you want SOLID or HOLLOW. - 6 - TEXT - Selecting this menu entry allows you to type a sentence up to 128 characters in length. You can edit this sentence using the ARROW keys and the INSERT and ESC keys. Hit ENTER when you finish typing your sentence. Use the mouse to position this sentence where ever you like and press the left mouse button to place your sentence. The color of the text is the currently selected text color set from the COLOR menu entry. To EXIT or abort use the 2 button exit, the ESC key only clears the line. SOUND - This menu entry allows you to insert canned sound effects or music into your graphic. If you select EFFECTS you will get a menu of sound effects, just click on one to hear it. To actually place a sound effect into a graphic, just click on the one you want then click on ACCEPT. The MORE entry will bring up a alternate menu with different sound effects. If you select MUSIC you will be able to point and click on a piano keyboard to play mouse music. To make a tune click on RECORD and then click on the piano keys, when done you can click on PLAY to hear it. When you get your tune the way you want it click on OK. You abort a tune by clicking on ABORT. You can click on PRACTICE and play all you like for fun. UNDO - This menu entry will ERASE the last CONDOR command that CPAINT created. This command may be a visable command or not. While you can see when a LINE is not drawn, you can't see a color set command that is erased. After chopping the last command off in it's buffer CPAINT will have to redisplay the whole CONDOR format picture from the beginning to insure that the setting or change takes effect. - 7 - ZONES - This Main Menu entry let's you make Point & Click(P&C) menus with BUTTONS or ICONS you draw. You can use these P&C menus to issue 4 letter commands to the DOS command line or a BBS. It's great for making a a DOS GUI that RUNs .BAT files! The uses here are just ENDLESS!!! P&C menus use the ARROW keys, you may be able to get your mouse driver to produce these. P&C menus can be created for BBS menus too! You just run them as a LANGUAGE on your BBS or a alternate set of menus to ANSI/ASCII. Check out the CONDOR.DOC for AUTO-DETECTION of CONDOR.SYS and send your BBS author a copy of CONDOR v6.0 and tell him you want Condor support if your BBS software isn't versital enough to allow anything but ANSI/ASCII. The BBS author can distribute CONDOR.SYS and a short readme file about Condor being donation-ware or the whole CONDOR 6.0 package. From the Zone menu select STEP 1 and then go draw a ICON or BUTTON using CPAINT after each ICON or BUTTON you DRAW select *ICON* from the Main Menu, you might be tempted to draw several ICONs but you must only draw ONE then select *ICON*. Now you will be back in the ZONE menu the next thing to do is select STEP 2. You will then be asked to set a UNIQUE ZONE number for the ICON. Just click on GET, and CPaint will find a free ZONE number. You can click on UP or DOWN and set it then click on OK but you need to be sure that the ZONE number hasn't been used already. I suggest Selecting ZONE number 127 and setting it to the whole screen. After setting the ZONE number you will be asked to LASSO the ZONE area. Just move the cross hair to the upper left corner of the ICON or BUTTON you drew and click and pull open a box surrounding it. Now click again and CPaint will ask you to TYPE a STRING that this ICON or BUTTON is to transmit to the BBS or DOS command line. Hit ENTER when you get it typed. Finally CPaint will ask if you want CONDOR to send a carriage return after the STRING the ICON or BUTTON sends. Then you will be back in the ZONE menu, go draw another ICON or BUTTON and do STEP 2 again over and over till you get all the ICONs drawn and Lasso-ed. When you get them all drawn then select FINISH Menu / Add Pointer. You will then pop out to the SETCOLOR Menu, select POLYMARKERS, pick your favorite color. Next you will pop into the POLY menu, select SET MARK. Pick the POLY Shape you want. After this just go and SAVE it all from the FILE menu. You can add a 'little' bit more graphics before you SAVE the P&C menu but a lot may make the transmition of the STRING premature. DELETING ICONs - You can delete them while in the creation process BUT don't try deleting the LAST ICON unitl AFTER you SAVE it. CPaint will highlight each ICON one by one and ask you if you want to delete it, just click on YES and it's gone! It deletes all graphics created while you were drawing the ICON, not just the LASSO-ed ZONE area. EXIT - just exits to the Main Menu doing nothing. - 8 - EXTRA - This entry brings up a sub menu that offers some miscellaneous commands and utilities. Descriptions are as follows: CPAINT Memory - Displays the Cpaint memory free and the amount of CPAINT memory used. The amount of memory that CPAINT can use is limited by what is free in the DOS conventional 640K memory. PAUSE x Sec - This will create a PAUSE command in the graphic. Move you mouse up and down to vary the length of pause. Click the left mouse button to accept or do the 2 button EXIT to abort. Users can ABORT this pause by pressing the CTRL key. PLAY GRAPHIC - This will redisplay your drawings from beginning to end. POSITION CURSOR - Use to position the text cursor. To place the cursor just move the mouse around and click the left mouse button. A 2 button EXIT will abort this command. TEXT Area - This lets you do a WHOLE screen clear without resetting a bunch of defaults. It allows you to EXPAND the number of TEXT lines to accomadate font heights. You can also SHRINK the number of normal TEXT lines the screen has to as little as ONE line. This puts normal text above and you can have your graphics below _undisturbed_ by text scrolling. Really useful for doing graphic illustrations for disk based BOOKs or Catalogs. It can be used in combination with X-SAVE to keep that ANNOYING BBS pause prompt to remain on the top most screen line. To clear just the TEXT area set by this command use a ANSI esc[2J COMMENT - This lets you type in a COMMENT that will be in the CONDOR script, but not seen. You can use it for whatever you want. CPaint uses comments to MARK where ICONs or BUTTONs begin and end. Comments can be really useful. INPUT - This gets KEYBOARD input from the user. You can use it to suspend a screen before proceeding to the next one or switching back to text mode. It has several options and CPaint will prompt you with the choices. This command can send the INPUT to the DOS command line or BBS with or without a carriage return and it can display the INPUT or NOT, it also can KEEP or just TOSS the INPUT away. - 9 - MOVE / ANIMATE -This option uses Condor 6.0's new command 'G' to grab rectangular portions of the screen and then move them. First you will be asked to select a NEW or OLD area to move. If you select NEW area then you will have to LASSO the area with the mouse, just click on the upper right corner of the area you want and drag open the rubber box. Next you will be asked if you want to use XOR, this will be best if you are trying to move something across a background, if you don't use XOR it's like you are rubber stamping a pattern. When you move the mouse the AREA will move with it but the movement will only be recorded if you are holding down the LEFT mouse button. You can click the left mouse button here and there to step frame the movement and this will help keep your Condor graphic smaller. If you try moving a BIG area you can use the MAGIC option to do it but remember that the big screen area you selected is the SOURCE EACH time the area is copied to the DESTINATION location, so if you overlap the original area or change it in any way it will be in the destination area. The frame around the big area you move will not show up in the graphic when it is redisplayed. Hitting the RIGHT mouse button will let you EXIT and LASSO another area to move or PLAYBACK what you just done or go to the MAIN menu. It would be best to select Play Graphic from the EXTRA menu after you use MOVE / Animate to insure that the display is correct, the PLAYBACK from within the MOVE / ANIMATE command might leave something on the screen, it doesn't do a good cleanup job after it's finished. - 10 - IMPORT TEXT - This entry allows you to load a ASCII text file into CPaint. This is great for creating paged digital documents with graphics, use the INPUT option to pause between pages or ZONE MENU to branch off to other topics (via .BAT files). CPaint uses the COMMENT command to mark where a text block begins & ends /BEGIN_TEXT@esc}esc#A and esc{/END_TEXT@..... The UNDO command will wipe out the WHOLE text block imported. Here's how you import text: Select IMPORT TEXT then you will be asked to select the number of text lines to allow for the display of normal scrolling text, these lines start at the TOP of the screen. Next you set where the cursor will be when the imported text starts to display, you can select top or bottom of the scrolling text area. Now you get to select a text file to import, it will then load in. Finally you will be asked to reset the number of text lines to allow for scrolling text area again, you may have wanted say 10 for the text area then go back to 1 line after the text is displayed. Last you will be asked where you want to reposition the cursor for the next text output to appear. That's it you can draw whatever you want on the text, underline it, draw a picture or bar graph, you can use the MOVE / ANIMATE option to reposition the text. Condor is powerful! - 11 - TEXT FONT - This entry will let you change how the TEXT will look on the screen. After using it the mouse pointer in CPaint may disappear below the 400 pixel mark, it confuses GFA BASIC. GFA BASIC just never figured this kind of thing would happen, unless it did it itself. The mouse will still work the pointer just hides when it shouldn't. Enough of that here's what happens when you select TEXT FONT: You are first asked to select a FONT type either ROM or CONDOR. If you select ROM you have 4 choices: 0 - Auto set the FONT to the rom character set that will yield 25 lines in the current graphics mode. This is also like a reset, some FONTs won't go away unless you select this option FIRST. 1 - Sets the ROM character set that is 8 dots wide and 8 dots high. 2 - Sets the ROM character set that is 8 dots wide and 14 dots high 3 - Sets the ROM character set that is 8 dots wide and 16 dots high If you select CONDOR you have these 4 choices: 0 - Sets the CONDOR character set that is 8 dots wide and 8 dots high. 1 - Sets the CONDOR character set that is 8 dots wide and 14 dots high. 2 - Sets the CONDOR character set that is 8 dots wide and 16 dots high 3 - Lets you load one of the CONDOR .CFX Font files. Size and style vary. Since you selected LOAD CFX you will be asked if you want to use HALF or the FULL CFX FONT. If you select HALF you will save a lot of bytes, the half that isn't loaded will use the CONDOR character set as DEFAULT. Also if you selected HALF you will be asked if you want to use the CONDOR character set as default for the first ASCII characters 0-31, just say yes, but you have the option. These characters are not in the normally displayed character set so you won't miss much and besides the CONDOR defaults for them are standard. Finally you get to pick out a FONT.CFX file to load. Then you will be asked to PREVIEW / ACCEPT the font. If you don't like the FONT just CANCEL and no harm done. - 12 - DOS Shell - This lets you jump out to DOS C:\ prompt and do whatever you need, like edit a text file to import into CPaint! The DOS text editor called "edit" requires to much memory to do much with what's left so try a text editor like "TED 1.0" or look for SHSUEDT3.ZIP "EDT.COM" a VERY nice EDITOR. CPaint will save out a file called CPTEMP.MEM do not alter this file it will be deleted when it is no longer needed. Just type EXIT to return to CPAINT. You should have a little over 300K of conventional memory free to use if you are loading most of your extra stuff HIGH, if not then when you are not running CPaint and you are using DOS 6+ you might want to type MEMMAKER at your DOS prompt. - 13 - ********************************************************************** DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS: Their is no cost or fee for SHAREWARE authors to include CONDOR support, they can include CONDOR.SYS in their distribution package or the whole Condor 6.0 release. If you only include part of the release, just include the LICENSE.DOC file explaining that CONDOR is DONATION-WARE send $15 to: Larry Mears 11027 Crestfield Dr. Huntsville, AL 35803 USA To support Condor and encourage updates. The full package can be obatained from: GEnie IBM PC RT, BBS RT, DigiPub RT or THE UNKNOWN SYSTEM BBS running VBBS 205-534-8532 14400 v.32bis Interested partys can write me at: Genie EMAIL address L.MEARS Galleria BBS leave EMAIL to CONDOR or send me US MAIL