Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/038a/baswiz17.zip/BASWIZ.DOC

Text File | 1991-11-06 | 152KB | 3,342 lines

                          The BASIC Wizard's Library                    page 1
                          =------------------------=
                                  Version 1.7

             BasWiz  Copyright (c) 1990-1991  Thomas G. Hanlin III



This software requires the Library Wizard (LIBWIZxx.ZIP) to function.

This is BasWiz, a library of assembly language and BASIC routines for use
with QuickBASIC version 4.5.  Full support for QB 4.0-4.5 and BC 6.0-7.1 is
provided with registration (you need to recompile the source code with the
compiler you use).  The BasWiz collection is copyrighted and may be
distributed only if the following conditions are met:

   1) No fee of over $10.00 may be charged for distribution.  This
      restriction applies only to physical copies and is not meant to
      prevent distribution by telecommunication services.

   2) All BasWiz files must be distributed together in original, unaltered
      form.  See FILES.LST for a list of the 28 BasWiz files included.

   3) The library must be distributed as an individual unit.  It may not be
      included as a part of other archives, and no files may be added to it.
      For instance, this means that disk distributors may not distribute
      BasWiz as part of a larger generic unit, and BBS sysops may not add
      advertising files to BasWiz.

You use this library at your own risk.  It has been tested by me on my own
computer, but I will not assume any responsibility for any problems which
BasWiz may cause you.  If you do encounter a problem, please let me know
about it, and I will do my best to verify and repair the error.

It is expected that if you find BasWiz useful, you will register your copy.
You may not use BasWiz routines in programs intended for sale unless you have
registered.  Registration entitles you to receive the latest version of
BasWiz, complete with full source code in assembly language and BASIC.  The
assembly code is designed for the MASM 6.0 assembler and may require changes
if you wish to use it with OPTASM or TASM.

Warning: Use of BasWiz for more than 30 days without registering has been
determined to cause the author to yodel under your window at night!

For an example of how to set up your program to access the BasWiz library,
how to LINK the routines, and so forth, take a look at the CREATE.BAT,
GDEMO.BAS and WDEMO.BAS files.  LIBRARY.TXT explains how to use libraries.

So who's the BASIC Wizard?  Why, with this library, you will be!  Read this
tome well, for invoking these routines without proper preparation may bring
unexpected results.  Cape and hat (optional) not included.  No assembly
required.

                              Table of Contents                         page 2



 Overview and Legal Info ................................................ 1

 BCD Math ............................................................... 3

 Expression Evaluator ................................................... 6

 Extensions to BASIC's math ............................................. 7

 Far Strings ............................................................ 9

 File Handling ......................................................... 11

 Fractions ............................................................. 19

 Graphics
    General Routines ................................................... 20
    Text-mode Routines ................................................. 31
    Printer Routines ................................................... 32
    A Little Geometry .................................................. 33
    Equations, Etc ..................................................... 36

 Memory Management and Pointers ........................................ 39

 Telecommunications .................................................... 42

 Virtual Windowing System .............................................. 48

 Other Routines ........................................................ 61

 Miscellaneous Notes ................................................... 62

 Error Codes ........................................................... 65

 Troubleshooting ....................................................... 67

 History & Philosophy .................................................. 69

 Using BasWiz with PDQ ................................................. 71

 Credits ............................................................... 72

                                   BCD Math                             page 3



Some of you may not have heard of BCD math, or at least not have more than a
passing acquaintance with the subject.  BCD (short for Binary-Coded Decimal)
is a way of encoding numbers.  It differs from the normal method of handling
numbers in several respects.  On the down side, BCD math is much slower than
normal math and the numbers take up more memory.  However, the benefits may
far outweigh these disadvantages, depending on your application: BCD math is
absolutely precise within your desired specifications, and you can make a BCD
number as large as you need.  If your applications don't require great range
or precision out of numbers, normal BASIC math is probably the best choice.
For scientific applications, accounting, engineering and other demanding
tasks, though, BCD may be just the thing you need.

The BCD math routines provided by BasWiz allow numbers of up to 255 digits
long (the sign counts as a digit, but the decimal point doesn't).  You may
set the decimal point to any position you like, as long as there is at least
one digit position to the left of the decimal.

Since QuickBASIC doesn't support BCD numbers directly, we store the BCD
numbers in strings.  The results are not in text format and won't mean much
if displayed.  A conversion routine allows you to change a BCD number to a
text string in any of a variety of formats.

Note that the BCD math handler doesn't yet track overflow/underflow error
conditions.  If you anticipate that this may be a problem, it would be a good
idea to screen your input or to make the BCD range large enough to avoid
these errors.

Let's start off by examining the routine which allows you to set the BCD
range:

   BCDSetSize LeftDigits%, RightDigits%

The parameters specify the maximum number of digits to the left and to the
right of the decimal point.  There must be at least one digit on the left,
and the total number of digits must be less than 255.  The BCD strings will
have a length that's one larger than the total number of digits, to account
for the sign of the number.  The decimal point is implicit and doesn't take
up any extra space.

It is assumed that you will only use one size of BCD number in your program--
there are no provisions for handling mixed-length BCD numbers.  Of course,
you could manage that yourself with a little extra work, if it seems like a
useful capability.  If you don't use BCDSetSize, the default size of the BCD
numbers will be 32 (20 to the left, 11 to the right, 1 for the sign).

You can get the current size settings in your program, too:

   BCDGetSize LeftDigits%, RightDigits%

                                   BCD Math                             page 4



Before doing any BCD calculations, you must have some BCD numbers!  The
BCDSet routine takes a number in text string form and converts it to BCD:

   TextSt$ = "1234567890.50"
   Nr$ = BCDSet$(TextSt$)

If your numbers are stored as actual numbers, you can convert them to a text
string with BASIC's STR$ function, then to BCD.  Leading spaces are ignored:

   Nr$ = BCDSet$(STR$(AnyNum#))

BCD numbers can also be converted back to text strings, of course.  You may
specify how many digits to the right of the decimal to keep (the number will
be truncated, not rounded).  If the RightDigits% is positive, trailing zeros
will be kept; if negative, trailing zeros will be removed.  There are also
various formatting options which may be used.  Here's how it works:

   TextSt$ = BCDFormat$(Nr$, HowToFormat%, RightDigits%)

The HowToFormat% value may be any combination of the following (just add the
numbers of the desired formats together):

   0   plain number
   1   use commas to separate thousands, etc
   2   start number with a dollar sign
   4   put the sign on the right side instead of the left side
   8   use a plus sign instead of a space if number is not negative

The BCD math functions are pretty much self-explanatory, so I'll keep the
descriptions brief.  Here are the single-parameter functions:

   Result$ = BCDAbs$(Nr$)              ' get the absolute value of a number
   Result$ = BCDCos$(Nr$)              ' cosine function
   Result$ = BCDCot$(Nr$)              ' cotangent function
   Result$ = BCDCsc$(Nr$)              ' cosecant function
   Result$ = BCDDeg2Rad$(Nr$)          ' convert degrees to radians
   e$ = BCDe$                          ' get the value of the constant "e"
   Result$ = BCDFact$(N%)              ' calculate the factorial of integer N
   Result$ = BCDFrac$(Nr$)             ' return the fractional part of a number
   Result$ = BCDInt$(Nr$)              ' return the integer part of a number
   Result$ = BCDNeg$(Nr$)              ' negate a number
   pi$ = BCDpi$                        ' get the value of the constant "pi"
   Result$ = BCDRad2Deg$(Nr$)          ' convert radians to degrees
   Result$ = BCDSec$(Nr$)              ' secant function
   Result% = BCDSgn%(Nr$)              ' signum function
   Result$ = BCDSin$(Nr$)              ' sine function
   Result$ = BCDSqr$(Nr$)              ' get the square root of a number
   Result$ = BCDTan$(Nr$)              ' tangent function

                                   BCD Math                             page 5



Notes on the single-parameter functions:

  The signum function returns an integer based on the sign of the BCD number:
     -1   if the BCD number is negative
      0   if the BCD number is zero
      1   if the BCD number is positive

  BCDpi$ is accurate to the maximum level afforded by the BCD functions.
  BCDe$ is accurate to as many as 115 decimal places.  The actual accuracy,
  of course, depends on the size of BCD numbers you've chosen.

  The trigonometric functions (cos, sin, tan, sec, csc, cot) expect angles in
  radians.  BCDDeg2Rad and BCDRad2Deg will allow you to convert back and
  forth between radians and degrees.



Here is a list of the two-parameter functions:

   Result$ = BCDAdd$(Nr1$, Nr2$)      ' add two numbers together

   Result$ = BCDSub$(Nr1$, Nr2$)      ' subtract the second nr from the first

   Result$ = BCDMul$(Nr1$, Nr2$)      ' multiply one number by another

   Result$ = BCDDiv$(Nr1$, Nr2$)      ' divide the first number by the second

   Result$ = BCDPower$(Nr$, Power%)   ' raise a number to a power

   Result% = BCDCompare%(Nr1$, Nr2$)  ' compare two numbers

The comparison function returns an integer which reflects how the two numbers
compare to eachother:

   -1   Nr1 < Nr2
    0   Nr1 = Nr2
    1   Nr1 > Nr2

                             Expression Evaluator                       page 6



The expression evaluator allows you to find the result of an expression
contained in a string.  Normal algebraic precedence is used, e.g. 4+3*5
evaluates to 19.  The usual numeric operators (*, /, +, -, ^) are supported
(multiply, divide, add, subtract, and raise to a power).  Use of negative
numbers is just fine, of course.  Parentheses for overriding the default
order of operations are also supported.

You may use either double asterisk ("**") or a caret ("^") symbols to
indicate exponentiation.

To evaluate an expression, you pass it to the evaluator as a string.  You
will get back either an error code or a single-precision result.  Try this
example to see how the expression evaluator works:

   REM $INCLUDE: 'BASWIZ.BI'
   DEFINT A-Z
   DO
      INPUT "Expression? "; Expr$
      IF LEN(Expr$) THEN
         Evaluate Expr$, Result!, ErrCode
         IF ErrCode THEN
            PRINT "Invalid expression.  Error code = "; ErrCode
         ELSE
            PRINT "Result: "; Result!
         END IF
      END IF
   LOOP WHILE LEN(Expr$)
   END

An expression evaluator adds convenience to any program that needs to accept
numbers.  Why make someone reach for a calculator when number crunching is
what a computer does best?

                          Extensions to BASIC's math                    page 7



For the most part, the math routines in this library is designed to provide
alternatives to the math routines that are built into BASIC.  Still, BASIC's
own math support is quite adequate for many purposes, so there's no sense in
ignoring it.  Here are some functions which improve on BASIC's math.

   Result! = ArcCosHS!(Nr!)    ' inverse hyperbolic cosine
   Result! = ArcSinHS!(Nr!)    ' inverse hyperbolic sine
   Result! = ArcTanHS!(Nr!)    ' inverse hyperbolic tangent
   Result! = ArcCosS!(Nr!)     ' arc cosine     (1 >= Nr >= -1)
   Result! = ArcSinS!(Nr!)     ' arc sine       (1 >= Nr >= -1)
   Result! = ErfS!(Nr!)        ' error function
   Result! = FactS!(Nr%)       ' factorial
   Result! = CotS!(Nr!)        ' cotangent
   Result! = CscS!(Nr!)        ' cosecant
   Result! = SecS!(Nr!)        ' secant
   Result! = CosHS!(Nr!)       ' hyperbolic cosine
   Result! = SinHS!(Nr!)       ' hyperbolic sine
   Result! = TanHS!(Nr!)       ' hyperbolic tangent
   Result! = Deg2RadS!(Nr!)    ' convert degrees to radians
   Result! = Rad2DegS!(Nr!)    ' convert radians to degrees
   Result! = Cent2Fahr!(Nr!)   ' convert centigrade to Fahrenheit
   Result! = Fahr2Cent!(Nr!)   ' convert Fahrenheit to centigrade
   Result! = Kg2Pound!(Nr!)    ' convert kilograms to pounds
   Result! = Pound2Kg!(Nr!)    ' convert pounds to kilograms
   Pi! = PiS!                  ' the constant "pi"
   e! = eS!                    ' the constant "e"

   Result# = ArcCosHD#(Nr#)    ' inverse hyperbolic cosine
   Result# = ArcSinHD#(Nr#)    ' inverse hyperbolic sine
   Result# = ArcTanHD#(Nr#)    ' inverse hyperbolic tangent
   Result# = ArcCosD#(Nr#)     ' arc cosine     (1 >= Nr >= -1)
   Result# = ArcSinD#(Nr#)     ' arc sine       (1 >= Nr >= -1)
   Result# = ErfD#(Nr#)        ' error function
   Result# = FactD#(Nr%)       ' factorial
   Result# = CotD#(Nr#)        ' cotangent
   Result# = CscD#(Nr#)        ' cosecant
   Result# = SecD#(Nr#)        ' secant
   Result# = CosHD#(Nr#)       ' hyperbolic cosine
   Result# = SinHD#(Nr#)       ' hyperbolic sine
   Result# = TanHD#(Nr#)       ' hyperbolic tangent
   Result# = Deg2RadD#(Nr#)    ' convert degrees to radians
   Result# = Rad2DegD#(Nr#)    ' convert radians to degrees
   Pi# = PiD#                  ' the constant "pi"
   e# = eD#                    ' the constant "e"

                          Extensions to BASIC's math                    page 8



   Result% = GCDI%(Nr1%, Nr2%) ' greatest common denominator
   Result% = Power2I%(Nr%)     ' raise 2 to a specified power

   Result& = GCDL&(Nr1&, Nr2&) ' greatest common denominator
   Result& = Power2L&(Nr%)     ' raise 2 to a specified power



Like BASIC's trig functions, these trig functions expect the angle to be in
radians.  Conversion functions are provided in case you prefer degrees.

Note that there is no ArcTanS! or ArcTanD! function for the simple reason
that BASIC supplies an ATN function.

Constants are expressed to the maximum precision available.

The Power2I% and Power2L& functions are vastly quicker than the equivalent
BASIC formulas.  If powers of two are useful to you, try these functions!



If you are not familiar with variable postfix symbols, here's a brief summary:

  Symbol   Meaning             Range (very approximate)
  ------   --------            ------------------------
    %      integer             +- 32767
    &      long integer        +- 2 * 10^9
    !      single precision    +- 1 * 10^38   (7-digit precision float. point)
    #      double precision    +- 1 * 10^308  (15-digit precision float. point)
    $      string              [0 to 32767 characters]

See your BASIC manual or QuickBASIC's online help for further details.

                                 Far Strings                            page 9



One of the best things about BASIC is its support for variable-length
strings.  Few other languages support such dynamically-allocated strings and
they're a terrifically efficient way of using memory.  At least, they would
be, except for one minor limitation... in every version of QuickBASIC and
BASCOM (except for the new and expensive BASCOM 7.0 "Professional Development
System"), string space is limited to a mere 50K-60K bytes.  As if this
weren't trouble enough, this space is also shared with a number of other
things.  Running out of string space is a common and painful problem.

Anyway, it used to be.  The BasWiz library comes with an assortment of
routines and functions which allow you to keep variable-length strings
outside of BASIC's tiny string area.  Currently, you may have up to 65,535
far strings of up to 255 characters each, subject to available memory.
Either normal system memory or expanded memory may be used.  Extended memory
can also be used if you have an XMS driver (such as HIMEM.SYS) installed.

Using far strings works almost the same way as using normal strings.  Rather
than referring to a far string with a string variable name, however, you
refer to it with an integer variable called a "handle".  To create a new far
string, you use a handle of zero.  A new handle will be returned to you which
will identify that string for future reference.

Before you use any far strings, you must initialize the far string handler.
When you are done using far strings, you must terminate the far string
handler.  Normally, each of these actions will take place only once in your
program: you initialize at the beginning and terminate at the end.

On the next page is an example program that reads a file into an array of far
strings, then displays it.  I'll leave out such niceties as error trapping to
keep the example easy to follow.

NOTE: The BasWiz far string handler does not support PDS far strings!  If you
are using PDS far strings, you can't use BasWiz far strings.

                                 Far Strings                           page 10



   REM $INCLUDE: 'BASWIZ.BI'
   DEFINT A-Z
   REDIM Text(1 TO 5000)                   ' array for far string handles
   FSInit 0                                ' initialize far string handler
   TextLines = 0
   OPEN "ANYFILE.TXT" FOR INPUT AS #1
   DO UNTIL EOF(1)
      LINE INPUT#1, TextRow$
      Handle = 0                           ' use zero to create new far string
      FSSet Handle, TextRow$               ' set the far string
      TextLines = TextLines + 1
      Text(TextLines) = Handle             ' save the far string handle
   LOOP
   CLOSE
   FOR Row = 1 TO TextLines
      PRINT FSGet$(Text(Row))              ' display a far string
   NEXT
   FSDone                                  ' terminate far string handler
   END

If you wanted to change an existing far string, you would specify its
existing handle for FSSet.  The handle of zero is used only to create new far
strings, rather in the manner of using a new variable for the first time.

Note the 0 after the FSInit call.  That specifies that main system memory
is to be used.  If you would prefer to use EMS, use a 1.  If you specify EMS
and none is available, BasWiz will fall back to conventional memory.

I had intended to add XMS support, but on closer inspection, it appears that
this would be quite slow.  Let me know how you feel about this, people!

                                File Handling                          page 11



The file handling capabilities of BASIC were improved considerably as of
QuickBASIC 4.0.  A binary mode was added and it became possible to use
structured (TYPE) variables instead of the awkward FIELD-based random access
handling.  Even today, however, BASIC file handling is inefficient for many
tasks.  It requires error trapping to avoid problems like open floppy drive
doors and cannot transfer information in large quantities at a time.

The BasWiz routines provide additional flexibility and power.  They allow you
to access files at as low or high a level as you wish.  Here are some of the
features of BasWiz file handling:

  - File sharing is automatically used if the DOS version is high enough,
    (DOS 3.0 or later) providing effortless network compatibility.
  - Critical errors, like other errors, are detected at any point you find
    convenient via a single function call.
  - Optional input buffers speed up reading from files.
  - Up to 32K of data may be read or written at one time.
  - Files can be flushed to disk to avoid loss due to power outages, etc.

Files are not considered to be strongly moded by BasWiz, although there are a
few limitations on how you can deal with text files as opposed to other kinds
of files.  Reads and writes normally take place sequentially, like the INPUT
and OUTPUT modes allowed by BASIC.  However, you can also do random access by
moving the file pointer to anywhere in the file, just as with the RANDOM and
BINARY modes allowed by BASIC.  These routines place no arbitrary limitations
on the programmer.

As with BASIC, files are referred to by a number after they are opened for
access.  Unlike BASIC, the number is returned to you when the file is
successfully opened, rather than being specified by you when you open the
file.  This means that you never have to worry about a file number already
being in use.  We'll refer to the file number as a "file handle" from now on.

                                File Handling                          page 12



Before doing anything else, you must initialize the file handling routines.
This is typically done only once, at the beginning of your program.  The
FInit routine needs to know the number of files you want to deal with.  This
can be up to 15 files, or possibly up to 50 if you are using DOS 3.3 or
higher.  Support for over 15 files has not been tested, since I don't have
DOS 3.3 or higher, so you use that feature at your own risk!  A future
version of BasWiz will support over 15 open files for DOS 3.0 and above.

   FInit Files, ErrCode

A file is opened for access like so:

   FOpen File$, FMode$, BufferLen, Handle, ErrCode

You pass the File$, FMode$, and BufferLen.  The Handle and ErrCode are
returned to you.  The "BufferLen" is the length of the buffer desired for
input.  This must be zero if you want to write to the file.  The filename is
passed in File$, naturally enough.  There is a choice of various modes for
FMode$ and these can be combined to some extent:

   A   Append to file      used to add more information to an existing file
   C   Create file         creates a new file
   R   Read access         allows reading (input) from a file
   T   Text mode file      allows text-mode input from a file
   W   Write access        allows writing (output) to a file

For the most part, the combinations are self-explanatory.  For instance, it
would be reasonable to open a file for read and write, for create and write,
for append and write, or for read and text.  Text files always require a
buffer.  If you request text access without specifying a buffer, a buffer of
512 bytes will be provided for you.  If you request create access without
additional parameters, the file will be opened for write by default.

You may not use a buffer if you want to write to a file.  This includes text
files, which always use a buffer, as well as binary files.  This is an
artificial limitation which will change in a future version of BasWiz.  It
exists now to reduce the internal complexity of the routines which write to
the file, so that they do not have to account for any buffering as well as
the current file pointer.  However, writing may be done to a text-type file
if the file was not opened in text mode.  We'll see how that works presently.

When you are done using a particular file, you can close it, just as in
ordinary BASIC:

   FClose Handle

Before your program ends, you should terminate the file handler.  This will
close any open files as well as concluding use of the file routines:

   FDone

                                File Handling                          page 13



That covers the basic set-up routines: initialize, open, close, and
terminate.  Of more interest are the routines which actually deal with the
file itself.  These provide assorted read/write services, the ability to get
or set the file read/write pointer, size, time, and date, and the ability to
get or set the error code for a specific file, among other things.  Let's
take a look at the error handler first.

The FInit and FOpen routines return an error code directly, since you need to
know immediately if these have failed.  The other file routines do not return
a direct error code, however.  In order to discover whether an error has
occurred, you use the FGetError% function.  This will return an error of zero
if there was no error, or a specific error code (listed at the end of this
manual) if some problem occurred.  The error code will remain the same until
you reset it using FError.  The FError service also allows you to test your
error handler by forcing specific error codes even when everything is fine.

   PRINT "Error code: "; FGetError(Handle)
   FError Handle, 0                          ' clear the error code

It is recommended that you check for errors after any file routine is used if
there is a chance that your program will be executed on a floppy disk.  These
are particularly prone to user errors (like leaving the drive door open) or
running out of space.  If your program will only run on a hard drive, you may
not need to check as frequently.  It's your choice.  Note that the error code
is not cleared automatically-- use FError to reset the error code to zero if
you determine that it wasn't a "fatal" error.

Down to the nitty-gritty... we've seen how to open and close a file, how to
check operations for errors, and so forth.  So how do we actually manipulate
the file?  There are assorted alternatives, depending on how you want to deal
with the file: text reads, text writes, byte-oriented reads and writes, and
block reads and writes, not to mention handling the time, date, size, and
read/write pointer.  We'll start off with the routines which read from a
file.

If you opened the file for text access, you must want to read the file a line
at a time.  Each line is assumed to be less than 256 characters and delimited
by a carriage return and linefeed (<CR><LF>, or ^M^J, in normal notation).
In that case, you should use the FReadLn$ function:

   St$ = FReadLn$(Handle)

A simple program to display a text file directly on the screen might look
something like this in BASIC:

   OPEN COMMAND$ FOR INPUT AS #1
   WHILE NOT EOF(1)
      LINE INPUT#1, St$
      PRINT St$
   WEND
   CLOSE #1

                                File Handling                          page 14



The same program using BasWiz would look something like this:

   REM $INCLUDE: 'BASWIZ.BI'
   DEFINT A-Z
   FInit 15, ErrCode
   FOpen COMMAND$, "RT", 0, Handle, ErrCode
   WHILE NOT FEOF(Handle)
      PRINT FReadLn$(Handle)
   WEND
   FDone

In either case, we're accepting a command-line parameter which specifies the
name of the file.  In the BasWiz example, note the use of the FEOF% function,
which tells whether we've gone past the end of the file.  This works like the
EOF function in BASIC.

There are two ways of reading from binary files.  You can get the results as
a string of a specified (maximum) length:

   St$ = FRead$(Handle, Bytes)

In plain BASIC, the same thing might be expressed this way:

   St$ = INPUT$(Bytes, FileNumber)

The other way of reading from a binary file has no equivalent in BASIC.  It
allows you to read in up to 32K bytes at a time, directly into an array or
TYPEd variable.  You can read the information into anything that doesn't
contain normal strings (the fixed-length string type can be used, though):

   Segm = VARSEG(Array(0))
   Offs = VARPTR(Array(0))
   FBlockRead Handle, Segm, Offs, Bytes

That would read the specified number of bytes into Array(), starting at array
element zero.  You can use any data type, whether single variable or array,
as long as it is not a variable length string.  In other words, Vbl$ and
Vbl$(0) would not work.  If you want to use a string with the block read, it
must be a fixed-length string.  For example:

   DIM Vbl AS STRING * 1024
   Segm = VARSEG(Vbl)
   Offs = VARPTR(Vbl)
   FBlockRead Handle, Segm, Offs, Bytes

It's a good idea to calculate the Segm and Offs values each time.  These tell
FBlockRead where to store the information it reads.  QuickBASIC may move the
variable around in memory, so VARSEG and VARPTR should be used just before
FBlockRead, to insure that they return current and correct information.

                                File Handling                          page 15



The file output commands are similar.  File output can only be done if there
is no input buffer.  This means that you can't use file output if the file
was opened in text mode, either, since text mode always requires an input
buffer.  That's a limitation that will be removed in a future version of
BasWiz.  It is possible to do text output on a file that was opened in binary
mode, however.  The limitation just means that you can't open a file for both
reading and writing if you use a buffer (or text mode).

To output (write) a string to a file, use this:

   FWrite Handle, St$

This is like the plain BASIC statement:

   PRINT #FileNumber, St$;

If you would like the string to be terminated by a carriage return and
linefeed, use this instead:

   FWriteLn Handle, St$

This is like the plain BASIC statement:

   PRINT #FileNumber, St$

In BASIC, the difference between the two writes is controlled by whether you
put a semicolon at the end.  With BasWiz, different routines are used
instead.  FWrite is like PRINT with a semicolon and FWriteLn is like PRINT
without a semicolon.

As well as simple string output, you can also output TYPEd variables and
even entire arrays.  This type of output has no corresponding BASIC
instruction, although it's somewhat similar to the file PUT statement.  Up to
32K can be output at a time:

   Segm = VARSEG(Array(0))
   Offs = VARPTR(Array(0))
   FBlockWrite Handle, Segm, Offs, Bytes

If you haven't already read the section on FBlockRead, go back a page and
review it.  The same comments apply for FBlockRead: it can handle
fixed-length strings but not old-style strings, and VARSEG/VARPTR should
immediately precede the block I/O, among other things.

                                File Handling                          page 16



Normally, reads and writes take place sequentially.  If you want to move to a
specific spot in the file, though, that's easy.  You can do it in text mode
or binary mode, whether or not you have a buffer, giving you additional
flexibility over the usual BASIC file handling.  Set the location for the
next read or write like so:

   FLocate Handle, Position&

The Position& specified will be where the next read or write takes place.  It
starts at one and (since it's specified as a LONG integer) can go up to
however many bytes are in the file.  If you want a record position rather
than a byte position, you can do that too.  Just convert the record number to
a byte number, like so:

   Position& = (RecordNumber& - 1&) * RecordLength& + 1&

If you do not want to maintain RecordNumber and RecordLength as LONG
integers, convert them to such by using the CLNG() function on them before
doing the calculation.  Otherwise you may get an overflow error in the
calculation, since QuickBASIC will assume that the result will be an integer.

You can get the current position of the file read/write pointer too:

   Position& = FGetLocate&(Handle)

Let's see... we've examined initialization and termination, opening and
closing, reading and writing, and manipulating the file read/write pointer.
What else could there be?  Well, how about checking the size of a file and
getting or setting the file time and date?  Why, sure!  The "get" routines
are pretty well self-explanatory:

   FileSize& = FGetSize&(Handle)
   FileTime$ = FGetTime$(Handle)
   FileDate$ = FGetDate$(Handle)

Setting the time and date is equally easy.  This should be done just before
you close the file with FClose or FDone.  You may use any date and time
delimiters you choose.  If a field is left blank, the appropriate value from
the current time or date will be used.  Years may be specified in four-digit
or two-digit format.  Two-digit years will be assumed to be in the 20th
century ("90" == "1990").  Careful there!  Your program should allow
four-digit dates to be used or disaster will strike when the year 2000
rolls around.  The 21st century is closer than you think!

   FTime Handle, FileTime$
   FDate Handle, FileDate$

                                File Handling                          page 17



There's just one more file routine.  It allows you to "flush" a file to disk.
This insures that the file has been properly updated to the current point, so
nothing will be lost if there is a power outage or similar problem.  If you
do not use the "flush" routine, data may be lost if the program terminates
unexpectedly (without going through FClose or FDone).  Note that use of
FFlush requires that a free file handle be available, under most DOS versions.

   FFlush Handle

That's it for the BasWiz file handler.  As a quick review, let's run through
the available routines, then try a couple of example programs.  Remember that
the BasWiz.REF file contains a brief reference for all of these routines too!
You might also wish to examine the WDEMO.BAS program, which also makes use of
the file routines.

FInit         initialize the file handler
FDone         terminate the file handler and close any open files

FOpen         open a file for access (like OPEN)
FClose        close a file (like CLOSE)

FRead$        read a string from a binary file (like INPUT$)
FReadLn$      read a string from a text file (like LINE INPUT)
FBlockRead    read an item (TYPE, STRING*##, or array) from a binary file

FWrite        write a string to a binary file
FWriteLn      write a string with a <CR><LF> to a binary file
FBlockWrite   write an item (TYPE, STRING*##, or array) to a binary file

FLocate       set the read/write pointer to a specified position
FTime         set the time stamp
FDate         set the date stamp
FError        set the error code

FGetLocate&   get the read/write pointer
FGetTime$     get the time stamp
FGetDate$     get the date stamp
FGetError     get the error code

FFlush        flush to disk (makes sure file is updated and current)
FGetSize&     get size
FEOF          determine whether the end of the file has been reached

                                File Handling                          page 18



So much for theory.  Let's try something practical.  A common problem is
copying one file to another.  We'll limit this to text files, so we can do it
in both plain BASIC and with BasWiz.  Although BasWiz can handle any type of
file readily, BASIC has problems in efficiently handling variable-length
binary files.  So, we'll do this first in BASIC, then BasWiz, for text files.

In BASIC, a text-file copying program might look like this:

   INPUT "File to copy"; FromFile$
   INPUT "Copy file to"; ToFile$
   OPEN FromFile$ FOR INPUT AS #1
   OPEN ToFile$ FOR OUTPUT AS #2
   WHILE NOT EOF(1)
      LINE INPUT#1, St$
      PRINT#2, St$
   WEND
   CLOSE

With BasWiz, the same program would look more like this:

   REM $INCLUDE: 'BASWIZ.BI'
   DEFINT A-Z
   INPUT "File to copy"; FromFile$
   INPUT "Copy file to"; ToFile$
   FInit 15, ErrCode
   FOpen FromFile$, "RT", 1024, FromHandle, ErrCode
   FOpen ToFile$, "CW", 0, ToHandle, ErrCode
   FileTime$ = FGetTime$(FromHandle)
   FileDate$ = FGetDate$(FromHandle)
   WHILE NOT FEOF(FromHandle)
      WriteLn ToHandle, ReadLn$(FromHandle)
   WEND
   FTime ToHandle, FileTime$
   FDate ToHandle, FileDate$
   FDone

You might have noticed that the BasWiz version of the program is a bit longer
than the plain BASIC version.  It has a number of advantages, however.  It's
faster, produces smaller code under ordinary circumstances, and preserves the
date and time of the original file in the copied file.  Unlike BASIC, the
BasWiz routines do not automatically add a ^Z to the end of text files, so
the BasWiz example will not alter the original file.

                                  Fractions                            page 19



Using BCD allows you to represent numbers with excellent precision, but at a
fairly large cost in speed.  Another way to represent numbers with good
precision is to use fractions.  Fractions can represent numbers far more
accurately than BCD, but can be handled much more quickly.  There are some
limitations, of course, but by now you've guessed that's always true!

Each fraction is represented by BasWiz as an 8-byte string.  The numerator
(top part of the fraction) may be anywhere from -999,999,999 to 999,999,999.
The denominator (the bottom part) may be from 1 to 999,999,999.  This allows
handling a fairly wide range of numbers exactly.

Fractions can be converted to or from numeric text strings in any of three
formats: real number (e.g., "1.5"), plain fraction (e.g., "3/2"), or whole
number and fraction (e.g., "1 1/2").  Internally, the numbers are stored as a
plain fraction, reduced to the smallest fraction possible which means the
same thing (for instance, "5/10" will be reduced to "1/2").

To convert a numeric text string into a fraction, do this:

   Nr$ = FracSet$(NumSt$)

To convert a fraction into a numeric text string, try this:

   NumSt$ = FracFormat$(Nr$, HowToFormat%)

The formatting options are:

   0   convert to plain fraction
   1   convert to whole number and fraction
   2   convert to decimal number

Here is a list of the other functions available:

   Result$ = FracAbs$(Nr$)            ' take the absolute value of a fraction
   Result$ = FracAdd$(Nr1$, Nr2$)     ' add two fractions
   Result% = FracCompare%(Nr1$, Nr2$) ' compare two fractions
   Result$ = FracDiv$(Nr1$, Nr2$)     ' divide the first fraction by the second
   Result$ = FracMul$(Nr1$, Nr2$)     ' multiply two fractions
   Result$ = FracNeg$(Nr$)            ' negate a fraction
   Result% = FracSgn%(Nr$)            ' signum function for a fraction
   Result$ = FracSub$(Nr1$, Nr2$)     ' subtract the 2nd fraction from the 1st

Fractions are automatically reduced to allow the greatest possible range.
Note that little range-checking is done at this point, so you may wish to
screen any input to keep it reasonable.

   Result     FracSgn      FracCompare
     -1       negative #    1st < 2nd
      0       # is zero     1st = 2nd
      1       positive #    1st > 2nd

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 20



These routines are designed to work with specific graphics modes, so your
program will only include those routines which apply to the modes you use.
The following modes are currently supported:

 SCREEN   Card     Graph. Res   Colors   Text Res.         Notes
 ======   ====     ==========   ======   =============     =====
    0      any       varies       16     varies              *0
    1      CGA     320 x 200       4     40 x 25
    2      CGA     640 x 200       2     80 x 25
    3      HGA     720 x 348       2     90 x 43             *1
    7      EGA     320 x 200      16     40 x 25
    8      EGA     640 x 200      16     80 x 25
    9      EGA     640 x 350      16     80 x 25/43
   10      EGA     640 x 350       4     80 x 25/43         mono
   11      VGA     640 x 480       2     80 x 30/60
   12      VGA     640 x 480      16     80 x 30/60
   13      VGA     320 x 200     256     40 x 25
 ----------------------------------------------------------------
   N0      VGA     360 x 480     256     45 x 30             *2
   N1      VGA     320 x 400     256     40 x 25             *2
   N2    <Epson>   480 x 640       2     60 x 80/45/40       *3
   N4      any      80 x  50       2     10 x 6              *4
   N5     SVGA    <user spec>    256     <varies>            *5


The number of rows of text available depends on the font: 8x8, 8x14, or 8x16.

*0  This is actually for text mode, not graphics mode.

*1  Note that the BasWiz Hercules routines, unlike those provided with
    QuickBASIC, do not require the QBHERC TSR to be loaded.  They are
    entirely self-contained.  However, they may need to be compiled by BC
    instead of QB, which may refuse to deal with the video mode change.

*2  This is a non-standard VGA mode.  It should work on most VGAs, however.

*3  This works with an Epson-compatible printer rather than the display.  The
    results may be previewed on a VGA, though.  See also "Printer Routines".

*4  This actually provides graphics in text mode.  It will work on any
    display adapter.  80x25 text remains available through PRINT.

*5  This mode provides support for high-resolution 256-color SuperVGA modes.
    You must specify the appropriate BIOS mode number and resolution.  Only
    Tseng-based video adapters are supported.

See "Miscellaneous Notes" for additional remarks.

Compatibility notes:
   An EGA can display CGA modes.
   A VGA can display EGA and CGA modes.
   An MCGA can display CGA modes and two VGA modes: SCREEN 11 and SCREEN 13.

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 21



The routine for a specific mode is indicated by a prefix of "G", followed by
the mode number, and then the routine name.  For example, if you wished to
plot a point in SCREEN 2 mode, you would use:

   G2Plot X%, Y%

Many of these routines correspond with existing BASIC instructions.  However,
they are smaller and usually faster by 22% - 64%.  See "Miscellaneous Notes"
for notes on the differences between BASIC and the BasWiz routines.

The smaller size may not be noticeable if you use the SCREEN statement, since
that causes BASIC to link in some of its own graphics routines.  If you
intend to use only BasWiz routines for graphics, you can avoid that by using
the G#Mode command instead of SCREEN:

   G#Mode Graphics%         ' use 0 for SCREEN 0, any other for SCREEN #

If you're using the mode N5 routines, you'll need to initialize them before
calling GN5Mode.  This is done by specifying the BIOS mode number and the
screen resolution:

   GN5Mode BIOSMode%, PixelsWide%, PixelsHigh%

One difference between BASIC and BasWiz is that, instead of each "draw"
command requiring a color parameter as in BASIC, the BasWiz library provides
a separate color command:

   G#Color Foreground%, Background%

The "foreground" color is used by all graphics routines.  The background
color is used by the G#Cls routine.  Both foreground and background colors
are used in the G#Write and G#WriteLn routines.

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 22



Here is a list of the corresponding routines, first BASIC, then BasWiz
(replace the "#" with the appropriate mode number):

   ' get the color of a specified point
   colour% = POINT(x%, y%)
   colour% = G#GetPel(x%, y%)

   ' set the color of a specified point
   PSET (x%, y%), colour%
   G#Color colour%, backgnd% : G#Plot x%, y%

   ' draw a line of a specified color
   LINE (x1%, y1%) - (x2%, y2%), colour%
   G#Color colour%, backgnd% : G#Line x1%, y1%, x2%, y2%

   ' draw a box frame of a specified color
   LINE (x1%, y1%) - (x2%, y2%), colour%, B
   G#Color colour%, backgnd% : G#Box x1%, y1%, x2%, y2%, 0

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 23



Here are some more BASIC and BasWiz routines:

   ' draw a box of a specified color and fill it in
   LINE (x1%, y1%) - (x2%, y2%), colour%, BF
   G#Color colour%, backgnd% : G#Box x1%, y1%, x2%, y2%, 1

   ' clear the screen and home the cursor
   CLS
   G#Cls

   ' get the current cursor position
   Row% = CSRLIN: Column% = POS(0)
   G#GetLocate Row%, Column%

   ' set the current cursor position
   LOCATE Row%, Column%
   G#Locate Row%, Column%

   ' display a string without a carriage return and linefeed
   PRINT St$;
   G#Write St$

   ' display a string with a carriage return and linefeed
   PRINT St$
   G#WriteLn St$

Note that BasWiz, unlike BASIC, allows both foreground and background colors
for text in graphics mode.  It also displays text substantially faster than
BASIC.  See the "Miscellaneous Notes" section for information on other
differences in text printing.

If you need to print a number rather than a string, just use the BASIC
function STR$ to convert it.  If you don't want a leading space (assuming the
number is not negative), use this formula:

   St$ = MID$(STR$(Number), 2)

The BasWiz library has other routines which have no BASIC equivalent.  One
allows you to get the current colors:

   G#GetColor Foreground%, Background%

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 24



Sometimes the normal text services seem unduly limited.  Text is displayed
only at specific character positions, so it may not align properly with a
graph, for instance.  Text is also of only one specific size.  These are
limitations which make the normal text routines very fast, but for times when
you need something a little bit more fancy, try:

   G#Banner St$, X%, Y%, Xmul%, Ymul%

You may display the string starting at any graphics position.  The Xmul% and
Ymul% values are multipliers, specifying how many times larger than normal
each character should be.  Using Xmul% = 1 and Ymul% = 1 will give you
normal-sized characters.  What "normal" means depends on the font in use.

Since G#Banner "draws" the text onto the screen, it is a bit slower than the
normal text services.  It also uses only the foreground color, so the letters
go right on top of anything that was previously there.  Use G#Box to clear
the area beforehand if this is a problem for you.

The G#Banner routine supports several fonts.  The larger fonts provide a more
precise character set but leave you with less room on the screen.  You may
choose from these fonts:

   Font Number     Font Size (width x height)
        0            8 x 8    --- default
        1            8 x 14
        2            8 x 16

Select a font like so:

   BFont FontNr%

If you want to find out what the current font is, that's possible too:

   FontNr% = GetBFont

Besides looking more elegant, the larger fonts are easier to read.  They will
also suffer less from being increased in size, although some deterioration is
inevitable when magnifying these kinds of fonts.

The G#Banner routines accept CHR$(0) - CHR$(127).  No handling of control
codes is done.  All codes are displayed directly to the screen.

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 25



Circles and ellipses can be drawn with the Ellipse routine.  This is similar
to the BASIC CIRCLE statement.  You specify the center of the ellipse (X,Y),
plus the X and Y radius values:

   G#Ellipse CenterX%, CenterY%, XRadius%, YRadius%

A circle is an ellipse with a constant radius.  So, to draw a circle, just
set both radius values to the single desired radius.

As well as the usual points, lines, and ellipses, BasWiz also allows you to
draw polygons: triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, all the way up to
full circles!

   G#Polygon X%, Y%, Radius%, Vertices%, Angle!

The X% and Y% values represent the coordinates of the center of the polygon.
The Radius% is the radius of the polygon (as if you were fitting it into a
circle).  Vertices% is the number of angles (also the number of sides) for
the polygon to have.  Angle! specifies the rotation of the polygon, and is
specified in radians.  See "A Little Geometry" for more information.

Another routine is designed to manipulate a GET/PUT image.  Given an image in
array Original%() and a blank array of the same dimensions called Flipped%(),
this routine copies the original image to the new array as a mirror image
about the horizontal axis.  This is the same as the image you'd see if you
turned your monitor upside-down: the resulting image is upside-down and
backwards.

   G#MirrorH Original%(), Flipped%()

Don't forget to make the Flipped%() array the same DIM size as the original,
or the picture will overflow into main memory, probably causing disaster!

Note that G#MirrorH will only work properly on images with byte alignment.
This means that the width of the image must be evenly divisible by four if
SCREEN 1 is used, or evenly divisible by eight if SCREEN 2 is used.  EGA
modes are not yet supported for this routine.

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 26



There are more routines that work only with SCREEN 2.  One allows you to load
a MacPaint-type image ("ReadMac" or .MAC files) into an array which can then
be PUT onto the screen:

   G2LoadMAC FileName$, Image%(), StartRow%

Note that a full .MAC picture is 576x720, which won't fit on the screen, so
the image will be truncated to 576x200.  You may specify a starting row
within the .MAC image, StartRow%, which may be 0-521, allowing the entire
picture to be loaded in several parts.

The Image%() must be dimensioned with 7202 elements:

   DIM Array(1 TO 7202) AS INTEGER

If you don't give an extension in the FileName$, an extension of ".MAC" will
be used.  There is no checking to see if the file actually exists, so you may
wish to do this beforehand.

There is no way of knowing whether a .MAC picture is supposed to be black on
white or white on black.  If the image doesn't look right when you PUT using
PSET, you can switch it around by using PUT with PRESET instead.

PC PaintBrush (.PCX) pictures can also be loaded.  These images can be of
various sizes, so you need to dimension a dynamic array for them:

   REM $DYNAMIC
   DIM Image(1 TO 2) AS INTEGER

The array will be set to the correct size by the loader.  It goes like this:

   G2LoadPCX FileName$, Image%(), ErrCode%

If you don't give an extension in the FileName$, an extension of ".PCX" will
be used.  You may wish to check to see if the file exists beforehand.
Possible errors are as follows:

   -1   File is not in PCX format
    1   Image is too large for desired screen mode
    2   Image won't work in desired screen mode (too many planes/colors)

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 27



Two new routines are replacements for the GET and PUT image statements in
BASIC.  They are on the slow side, but if you don't intend to use them for
animation, they will serve to save some memory.  There are also GN5Get and
GN5Put routines for use with 256-color SuperVGA modes.

   REM $DYNAMIC
   DIM Image(1 TO 2) AS INTEGER
   G2Get X1%, Y1%, X2%, Y2%, Image()

Note the DIMensioning of a dynamic array.  The G2Get routine will set the
array to the appropriate size to hold the image.

The PUT replacement assumes that you intend to PSET the image.  It doesn't
allow for other display modes yet:

   G2Put X%, Y%, Image()

See "Miscellaneous Notes" for more information on using GET/PUT images and
the directions I'll be taking with them in the future.  Note that SCREEN 13
is also supported, via G13Get and G13Put.

The COLOR statement in SCREEN 1 is anomalous.  It doesn't really control
color at all, which is why QuickBASIC proper doesn't support colored text in
this (or any graphics) mode.  Instead, it is used for controlling the
background/border color and palette.  Since BasWiz -does- support a true
G1COLOR routine, there are different routines which allow you to change the
palette and border colors. To change the background (and border) color, use:

   G1Border Colour%

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 28



There are two palette routines.  Why two?  Well, QuickBASIC supports two CGA
palettes.  One of the routines works like QuickBASIC and can be used on any
CGA, EGA or VGA display (as long as it's in CGA mode).  The other routine
gives you a wider choice of palettes, but will only work on true CGAs (and
some EGA or VGA systems that have been "locked" into CGA mode).

Here's the QuickBASIC-style two-palette routine for any CGA/EGA/VGA:

   G1PaletteA PaletteNr%

The PaletteNr% may be as follows:

   0     (bright) Green, Red, Yellow
   1     Cyan, Violet, White


The more flexible six-palette routine (for CGA only) works like this:

   G1PaletteB PaletteNr%

Palettes are as follows:

   0     Green, Red, Brown            4     (bright) Green, Red, Yellow
   1     Cyan, Violet, White          5     (bright) Cyan, Violet, White
   2     Cyan, Red, White             6     (bright) Cyan, Red, White

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 29



The EGA has a number of features which work in all its modes, so rather than
giving them screen mode prefixes, they are simply named with an "E".  These
routines allow you to get or set the palette, get or set the border color,
and determine whether the higher background colors should be displayed as
bright colors or as blinking.

To get a palette color value, use:

   Colour% = EGetPalette(ColorNumber%)

To set the color value, use:

   EPalette ColorNumber%, Colour%

To get the border color:

   Colour% = EGetBorder%

You can probably guess how to set the border color:

   EBorder Colour%

Finally, the blink vs. intensity.  Actually, this is designed for text mode;
I'm not sure whether it has any function in graphics modes.  The text-mode
default is for blinking to be turned on.  With BASIC, you add 16 to the
foreground color to make it blink.  That's a little weird, since the "blink"
attribute is actually a part of the background color, but that's how BASIC
views it.  You can tell the EGA to turn off blinking, in which case adding 16
to the foreground color makes the background color intense.  This doubles the
number of available background colors.

   EBlink Blink%

Use -1 for blinking (default), or 0 to turn off blinking.

                         Graphics: General Routines                    page 30



Like the EGA, the VGA has a number of features which work in all its modes.
Again, rather than giving them screen mode prefixes, we simply name them with
a "V".  The current routines allow you to get or set the palette colors.

To get a palette color value, use:

   VGetPalette(ColorNumber%, Red%, Green%, Blue%)

To set the color value, use:

   VPalette ColorNumber%, Red%, Green%, Blue%

As you've probably noticed, this doesn't work the same way as the QuickBASIC
PALETTE statement.  Rather than using a formula to calculate a single LONG
color value, like QuickBASIC, the BasWiz library allows you to specify the
color in a more meaningful way.  The Red%, Green%, and Blue% parameters each
hold an intensity value (0-63).  By mixing these three, you can get an
immense variety of shades-- over 250,000 combinations in all.

If you need to keep track of the intensities in your program, I'd suggest the
following TYPE definition:

   TYPE VGAcolor
      Red AS INTEGER
      Green AS INTEGER
      Blue AS INTEGER
   END TYPE

If space is more important than speed, you can compress that to half the size
by using STRING * 1 instead of INTEGER.  In that case, you will need to use
the CHR$ and ASC functions to convert between string and integer values.

                        Graphics: Text-mode Routines                   page 31



It may seem odd to lump text-mode handling in with graphics mode.  It seemed
like the most logical approach, however.  There is certainly some value in
having graphics-type capabilities for text mode.  The ability to draw lines
and boxes, use banner-style text, and so forth can be handy.  So, for the
folks who don't need all the power of the virtual windowing system, I've
added text-mode support into the "graphics" routines.

There are some quirks to these routines, since text mode doesn't work the
same way as graphics mode.  For one thing, each "pixel" is actually an entire
character.  The default pixel is a solid block character, CHR$(219).  You can
change this, however:

   G0SetBlock Ch%      ' set ASCII code (use ASC(Ch$) to convert from string)
   Ch% = G0GetBlock%   ' get ASCII code (use CHR$(Ch) to convert to a string)

Since a pixel consists of a character with both foreground and background
colors, the "get pixel" routine has been altered to accordingly:

   G0GetPel X%, Y%, Ch%, Fore%, Back%

Finally, let's consider the "set mode" command.  If you pass it a zero, the
current mode will be used as-is.  This is useful in case you've already set
up a desired mode.

Any other mode number will be assumed to be a BIOS video mode which should be
set.  If you feel like initializing the screen mode for some reason, it may
be useful to know that 3 is the normal color mode (for CGA, EGA, VGA, etc)
and 7 is the normal mono mode (for MDA and Hercules).  These provide 80x25
text.  If you wish to take advantage of 43-row EGA or 50-row VGA text modes,
you must set them up in advance (using the BASIC statements SCREEN and WIDTH)
before calling G0Mode with a zero.

If you have a SuperVGA or other adapter which supports unusual text modes,
you can use the mode command to switch to the appropriate mode.  On my Boca
SuperVGA, for example, mode &H26 provides 80x60 text, and mode &H22 provides
132x44.  The G0 routines are designed to support any text resolution up to
255x255, provided that the BIOS updates the appropriate memory locations when
a mode set is done.  This should be true for any special EGA or VGA-based
text modes.

   G0Mode ModeNr%

I will probably add another set of text-mode routines in the future.
Provided I can get information on how to control an MDA/Herc cursor directly,
I will add a set of routines that will work only on MDA and Herc displays.
This will enable you to write programs to support dual-monitor setups, using
the new routines for the mono display and the existing routines for the color
display.  Can anyone tell me how to program the video chip directly or point
me to a source for such information?

                         Graphics: Printer Routines                    page 32



The BasWiz printer routines allow you to work with a printer using the same
convenient methods you'd use on a screen.  The image is created with the
usual G# routines (using mode N2), but the results are kept in a buffer in
memory (about 37K bytes) rather than being displayed directly.  The image can
be previewed on a VGA or printed out at your convenience, to any printer or
even a file.  The results will take up a single printer page, assuming the
usual 8.5" x 11" paper is used.

Printing a finished page works like this:

   GN2Print Device$

The Device$ variable should be set to the name of the device:

   LPT1    parallel printer on port 1
   LPT2    parallel printer on port 2
   LPT3    parallel printer on port 3
   COM1    serial printer on port 1
   COM2    serial printer on port 2

Instead of using a device name, you can also use a file name, to store the
results for later printing.  Output is done using BASIC file handling, so it
would be a good idea to provide an ON ERROR GOTO trap in case of problems.
The FREEFILE function is used, so you don't have to worry about conflicts
with any files in use by your program.

Getting a page layout just right can consume a lot of paper.  Fortunately,
there's a "preview" routine that allows you to display the results on a VGA.
The display will be sideways, allowing the whole page to be seen at once.
This will exactly match the printed output in N2 mode.  Here's how it works:

   G11Mode 1               ' set SCREEN 11 (VGA graphics mode, 640x480 x2)
   GN2Display              ' display the page
   DO                      ' wait for a key to be pressed
   LOOP UNTIL LEN(INKEY$)  '
   G11Mode 0               ' set SCREEN 0 (text mode)

The GN2Write and GN2WriteLn printer routines are unlike the display versions
of the same routines in that they don't scroll.  These routines only allow
you to design one page at a time.

Before using GN2Write or GN2WriteLn routines, you must choose a font with
GN2Font.  These are the same fonts as used in G#Banner:

    0     8 x 8        80 text rows
    1     8 x 14       45 text rows
    2     8 x 16       40 text rows

The current font can be retrieved with GN2GetFont%.  The result will be
meaningless if the font was never set with GN2Font.

                         Graphics: A Little Geometry                   page 33



The increasing capabilities of computer graphics systems has left many of us
in the dust.  It's great to be able to run dazzling applications or to doodle
with a "paint" program, but many of us find it difficult to design appealing
images of our own.  Becoming an artist is perhaps a bit more than most of us
are willing to take on!  It is important to remember, however, that computers
are wonderful number-crunchers.  With a little application of plane geometry,
you can have the computer take on much of the work for you-- and after all,
isn't that why we have computers in the first place?

A complete review of plane geometry is a bit beyond the scope of this text.
However, I'm going to run through some of the things I think you'll find most
useful.  I'd also like to suggest that you might dig out your old textbooks
or rummage through your local used book store.  It may have seemed like a dry
subject at the time, but when you can watch the results growing on your
computer screen, you will have a much better idea of how geometry can be
useful to you-- and it can be surprisingly fun, too!

In geometry talk, a "point" doesn't have any actual size.  In our case, we
want to apply geometry to physical reality, namely the computer screen.  As
far as we're concerned, a "point" will be an individual graphics dot, also
called a "pel" or "pixel" (for "picture element").  We can safely dispense
with such formalities for our applications, for the most part.

The most important thing about a point is that it has a location!  Ok, that
may not seem staggering, but it happens that there are a number of ways of
specifying that location.  The most common method is called the Cartesian
coordinate system.  It is based on a pair of numbers: X, which represents the
distance along a horizontal line, and Y, which represents the distance along
a vertical line.  Consider the CGA in SCREEN 2, for instance.  It has a
coordinate system where X can be 0 - 639 and Y can be 0 - 199.  The points
are mapped on kind of an invisible grid.

The Cartesian coordinate system makes it easy to visualize how a given point
relates to other points on the same plane (or screen).  It is particularly
useful for drawing lines.  Horizontal and vertical lines become a cinch: just
change the X value to draw horizontally, or the Y value to draw vertically.
Squares and rectangles (or boxes) can be formed by a combination of such
lines.  You can define an area of the screen in terms of an imaginary box
(as GET and PUT do) with nice, clean boundaries.  When we get to diagonal
lines, it's a bit more of a nuisance, but still easy enough with the proper
formula.  That means we can do triangles too.  Curves are worse... when it
comes to even a simple circle or ellipse, the calculations start to get on
the messy side.  For things like that, though, there is an alternative.

Another way of describing the location of a point is by Polar coordinates.
In Cartesian coordinates, the location is specified by its horizontal and
vertical distances from the "origin" or reference point, (0,0).  In Polar
coordinates, the location is specified by its distance and angle from the
origin.  Think of it as following a map: Cartesian coordinates tell you how
many blocks down and how many blocks over the point is, whereas Polar
coordinates tell you in which direction the point is and how far away it is
"as the crow flies".

                         Graphics: A Little Geometry                   page 34



The Polar coordinate system is great for describing many kinds of curves,
much better than Cartesian.  For example, a circle is defined as all of the
points at a given (fixed) distance from a center point.  Polar coordinates
include both a distance and an angle, and we've already got the distance, so
all we need to do is plot points at all of the angles on a circle.
Technically, there is an infinite number of angles, but since our points
don't follow the mathematical definition (they have a size), we don't have to
worry about that.

Let me digress for a moment to talk about angles.  In BASIC, angles are
specified in "radians".  People more often use "degrees".  Fortunately, it
isn't hard to convert from one to the other.  Both may be visualized on a
circle.  In radians, the sum of the angles in a circle is twice pi.  In
degrees, the sum of the angles is 360.  That's something like this:


                          90 deg, 1/2 * pi rad
                                /---|---\
                               /    |    \
                              /     |     \
                180 degrees   |___  .  ___|    0 deg, 0 rad; or...
                pi radians    |           |  360 deg, 2 * pi rad
                              \     |     /
                               \    |    /
                                \---|---/
                          270 deg, 3/2 * pi rad


Ok, so that's a grotesquely ugly circle!  Hopefully it shows the important
thing, though.  Angles start at zero on the extreme right and get larger as
they work around counter-clockwise.  The places marked on the "circle" are
places where lines drawn horizontally and vertically through the center
intersect the outside of the circle.  These serve as a useful reference
point, especially in that they help show how the angles can be construed from
a Cartesian viewpoint.

So much for angles.  I'll go into conversion formulae, the value of pi, and
other good junk a bit later on.  Right now, let's get back to our discussion
of Polar coordinates.

I've explained how the Polar system makes it easy to draw a circle.  Since
you can vary the range of angles, it's equally simple to draw an arc.  If you
wanted to make a pie chart, you might want to join the ends of the arcs to
the center of the circle, in which case you'd keep the angle constant (at the
ends of the arc) and plot by changing the distance from zero to the radius.
Circles are also handy for drawing equilateral polygons... you know, shapes
with sides of equal length: triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, etc.  In
this case, the best features of the Cartesian and Polar systems can be joined
to accomplish something that would be difficult in either alone.

                         Graphics: A Little Geometry                   page 35



The starting point for these polygons is the circle.  Imagine that the
polygon is inside a circle, with the vertices (pointy ends, that is, wherever
the sides meet) touching the edge of the circle.  These are equilateral
polygons, so all of the sides and angles are the same size.  Each of the
vertices touches the circle, and each does it at exactly the same distance
from each other along the arc of the circle.  All of this detail isn't
precisely necessary, but I hope it makes the reasoning a bit more clear!

The circle can be considered as being divided by the polygon into a number of
arcs that corresponds to the number of vertices (and sides) the polygon has.
Think of a triangle inside a circle, with the tips all touching the circle.
If you ignore the area inside the triangle, you will see that the circle is
divided into three equal arcs.  The same property is true of any equilateral
polygon.  As a matter of fact, as the number of vertices goes up, the circle
is partitioned into more, but smaller, arcs... so that a polygon with a large
enough number of vertices is effectively a circle itself!

Anyway, the important thing is the equal partitioning.  We know how many
angles, be they degrees or radians, are in a circle.  To get the points of a
polygon, then... well, we already know the "distance" part, that's the same
as the radius.  The angles can be calculated by dividing the angles in the
whole circle by the number of vertices in the desired polygon.  Trying that
case with the triangle, assuming a radius of 20 (why not), and measuring in
degrees, that would give us the Polar points (20, 0), (20, 120), (20, 240).
To make this a triangle, we need to connect the points using lines, which is
easy in Cartesian coordinates.  Since the computer likes Cartesian anyway, we
just convert the Polar coordinates to Cartesian, draw the lines, and viola!

That's essentially the method used by the G#Polygon routines.  It's very
simple in practice, but I haven't seen it elsewhere... probably because
people forget about the Polar coordinate system, which is what makes it all
come together.  Polar coordinates also have simple equations for figures that
look like daisies, hearts, and other unusual things.  See "Equations, Etc"
and ROSES.BAS for more information.

On a side note, the Cartesian system isn't used by all computers, although
it's the most common.  Cartesian coordinates are the standard for what is
called "raster" displays.  The Polar coordinate system is used on "vector"
displays.  One example of a vector display that you may have seen is the old
Asteroids video arcade game.  Vector displays tend to be used for drawing
"framework" pictures where the image must be very sharp (unlike in raster
images, the diagonal lines aren't jagged, since there's no raster "grid").

                          Graphics: Equations, Etc                     page 36



In this section, I'm going to list a number of equations and so forth.  Some
of them will be useful to you in experimenting with Polar coordinates.  Some
of them provide formulae for things that are already in BasWiz, but which you
might like to understand better.  Some of them are just for the heck of it...
note that not all of this information may be complete enough for you to just
use without understanding it.

One problem is... if you try to draw a circle, for instance, it will come out
looking squashed in most SCREEN modes.  Remember we said our points, unlike
mathematical points, have a size?  In most graphics modes, the points are
effectively wider than they are high, so a real circle looks like an ellipse.

Another problem is that these equations are based on an origin of (0,0) which
is assumed to be at the center of the plane.  In our case, (0,0) is at the
upper right edge, which also makes the Y axis (vertical values) effectively
upside-down.  This isn't necessarily a problem, but sometimes it is!  Adding
appropriate offsets to the plotted X and Y coordinates often fixes it.  In
the case of Y, you may need to subtract the value from the maximum Y value to
make it appear right-side-up.

The displayed form of these equations may contain "holes", usually again
because the points have a size, and/or since we try to use integer math to
speed things up.  If the screen had infinite resolution, this would not be a
problem... meanwhile (!), getting around such problems takes fiddlin'.

There are other problems, mostly due to forcing these simplified-universe
theoretical equations into practical use.  It's a lot easier to shoehorn in
these simple equations than to use more accurate mathematical descriptions,
though... a -lot- easier.  So a few minor quirks can be ignored!

With those disclaimers, here's the scoop on some handy equations.

   Polar coordinates may be expressed as (R, A), where R is radius or
   distance from the origin, and A is the angle.

   Cartesian coordinates may be expressed as (X, Y), where X is the distance
   along the horizontal axis and Y is the distance along the vertical axis.

   Polar coordinates can be converted to Cartesian coordinates like so:
      X = R * COS(A)
      Y = R * SIN(A)

   Angles may be expressed in radians or degrees.  BASIC prefers radians.
   Radians are based on PI, with 2 * PI radians in a circle.  There are 360
   degrees in a circle.  Angles increase counter-clockwise from a 3:00 clock
   position, which is the starting (zero) angle.  Angles can wrap around: 720
   degrees is the same as 360 degrees or 0 degrees, just as 3:00 am is at the
   same clock position as 3:00 pm.

   Angles may be converted between degrees and radians as follows:
      radians = degrees * PI / 180
      degrees = radians * 180 / PI

                          Graphics: Equations, Etc                     page 37




   The value PI is approximately 3.14159265358979.  For most graphics
   purposes, a simple 3.141593 should do quite nicely.  The true value of PI
   is an irrational number (the decimal part repeats forever, as near as
   anyone can tell).  It has been calculated out to millions of decimal
   points by people with a scientific bent (and/or nothing better to do)!

Line Drawing:

   One of the convenient ways of expressing the formula of a line (Cartesian
   coordinates) is:
      Y = M * X + B

   Given the starting and ending points for the line, M (the slope,
   essentially meaning the angle of the line) can be determined by:
      M = (Y2 - Y1) / (X2 - X1)

   The B value is called the Y-intercept, and indicates where the line
   intersects with the Y-axis.  Given the ingredients above, you can
   calculate that as:
      B = Y1 - M * X1

   With this much figured out, you can use the original formula to calculate
   the appropriate Y values, given a FOR X = X1 TO X2 sort of arrangement.
   If the slope is steep, however, this will result in holes in the line.  In
   that case, it will be smoother to recalculate the formula in terms of the
   X value and run along FOR Y = Y1 TO Y2... in that case, restate it as:
      X = (Y - B) / M

   Keep an eye on conditions where X1 = X2 or Y1 = Y2!  In those cases,
   you've got a vertical or horizontal line.  Implement those cases by simple
   loops to improve speed and to avoid dividing by zero.



Circle Drawing:

   The Cartesian formula gets messy, especially due to certain aspects of the
   display that are not accounted for (mainly that pixels, unlike theoretical
   points, have a size and shape which is usually rectangular).  The Polar
   formula is trivial, though.  The radius should be specified to the circle
   routine, along with the center point.  Do a FOR ANGLE! = 0 TO 2 * PI! STEP
   0.5, converting the resulting (Radius, Angle) coordinates to Cartesian,
   then adding the center (X,Y) as an offset to the result.  The appropriate
   STEP value for the loop may be determined by trial and error.  Smaller
   values make better circles but take more time.  Larger values may leave
   "holes" in the circle.

                          Graphics: Equations, Etc                     page 38



Spiral Drawing:

   If you use Polar coordinates, this is easy.  Just treat it like a circle,
   but decrease the radius as you go along to spiral in... or increase the
   radius as you go along if you prefer to spiral out.



Polygon Drawing:

   I've already discussed that, so I'll leave it as an exercise... or of
   course you can examine my source code if you register BasWiz!  The polygon
   routines are in BASIC, except for the line-drawing parts.



Flower Drawing:

   This sort of thing would be rather difficult to do using strictly
   Cartesian methods, but with Polar coordinates, no problem.  Here we
   calculate the radius based on the angle, using something like:

      FOR Angle! = 0 TO PI! * 2 STEP .01

   (a low STEP value is a good idea).  The radius is calculated like so:

      Radius! = TotalRadius! * COS(Petals! * Angle!)

   The Petals! value specifies how many petals the flower should have.  If it
   is odd, the exact number of petals will be generated; if even, twice that
   number will be generated.

   These figures are technically called "roses", although they more resemble
   daisies.  Try the ROSES.BAS program to see how they look.



Other Drawing:

   Experiment!  There are all sorts of interesting things you can do with the
   Polar coordinate system in particular.  Dig up those old Geometry texts or
   see if your Calculus books review it.  If you've kept well away from math,
   try your local library or used book store.

                        Memory Management and Pointers                 page 39



On the whole, BASIC is easily a match for any other language, as far as
general-purpose programming goes.  There is one major lack, however-- a set
of valuable features that is supported by most other languages, but was
inexplicably left out of BASIC.  Perhaps Microsoft felt it was too advanced
and dangerous for a so-called "beginner's" language.  In truth, using
pointers and memory management takes a little understanding of what you're
doing-- the compiler can't protect you from all of your mistakes.  However,
they can be extraordinarily useful for many things, so I have added these
capabilities to BasWiz.

A "pointer" is essentially just the address of an item.  It is useful in two
respects: it allows you to pass just the pointer, rather than the whole item
(be it a TYPEd variable, normal variable, entire array, or whatever) to a
subprogram.  This is faster and more memory-efficient than the alternatives.
Secondly, a pointer combined with memory management allows you to allocate
and deallocate memory "on the fly", in just the amount you need.  You don't
have to worry about DIMensioning an array too large or too small, or even
with how large each element of the array should be, for example.  You can
determine that when your program -runs-, rather than at compile time, and set
up your data structures accordingly.  You can also create a large variety of
data structures, such as trees and linked lists, which would be difficult and
cumbersome to emulate using BASIC alone.

The BasWiz memory/pointer routines allow you to allocate and deallocate
memory; fill, copy or move a block of memory; get or put a single character
according to a pointer; and convert back and forth between a segment/offset
address and a pointer.

Pointers are kept in LONG integers, using an absolute memory addressing
scheme.  This means that you can manipulate pointers just like any ordinary
LONG integer, e.g. to move to the next memory address, just add one.  Since
you can convert from a segment/offset address to a pointer and you can copy
information from one pointer to another, you can move information back and
forth between allocated memory and a TYPEd variable, numeric variable, or
array.  You can even do things like set a pointer to screen memory and
transfer the screen into a variable or vice versa!  Or implement your own
"far string" routines, hierarchical evaluations, or any number of other
things.  Pointers are incredibly powerful!

Note that there are different ways of representing the same segment/offset
address, but only one absolute pointer representation.  If you need to
compare two addresses, using pointers is terrific.  However, it's good to
keep in mind that an segment/offset address may -appear- to change if you
convert it to a pointer and then back to a segment/offset address.  When you
convert from a pointer to a segment/offset, the segment will be maximized and
the offset minimized.  So, for example, 0040:001C will turn into 0041:000C.

Although the byte count for these routines is handled through a LONG integer,
the routines handle a maximum of 65,520 bytes at a time.  In other words, a
pointer can only access a bit less than 64K at a time.  If I get enough
requests to extend this range, I will do so.  Meantime, that's the limit!

                        Memory Management and Pointers                 page 40



There are two routines which take care of memory management.  These allow you
to allocate or deallocate memory.  Note that if you allocate too much memory,
QuickBASIC won't have any memory to work with!  Use the BASIC function
"SETMEM" to see how much memory is available before going hog-wild.

You can allocate memory like so:

   MAllocate Bytes&, Ptr&, ErrCode%

If there isn't enough memory available, an error code will be returned.
Otherwise, Ptr& will point to the allocated memory.  Memory is allocated in
chunks of 16 bytes, so there may be some memory wasted if you choose a number
of bytes that isn't evenly divisible by 16.

When you are finished with that memory, you can free it up by deallocation:

   MDeallocate Ptr&, ErrCode%

An error code will be returned if Ptr& doesn't point to previously allocated
memory.

In the best of all possible worlds, there would be a third routine which
would allow you to reallocate or resize a block of memory.  However, due to
certain peculiarities of QuickBASIC, I was unable to implement that.  You can
simulate such a thing by allocating a new area of memory of the desired size,
moving an appropriate amount of information from the old block to the new,
and finally deallocating the old block.

Once you've allocated memory, you can move any sort of information in or out
of it except normal strings-- fixed-length strings, TYPEd values, arrays, or
numeric values.  To do that, you use BASIC's VARSEG and VARPTR functions on
the variable.  Convert the resulting segment/offset address to a pointer:

   TSeg% = VARSEG(Variable)
   TOfs% = VARPTR(Variable)
   VariablePtr& = MJoinPtr&(TSeg%, TOfs%)

Moving the information from one pointer to another works like so:

   MMove FromPtr&, ToPtr&, Bytes&

For STRING or TYPEd values, you can get the number of bytes via the LEN
function.  For numeric values, the following applies:

   Type       Bytes per value
   =======    ===============
   INTEGER           2
   LONG              4
   SINGLE            4
   DOUBLE            8

                        Memory Management and Pointers                 page 41



The "memory move" (MMove) routine is good for more than just transferring
information between a variable and allocated memory, of course.  Pointers can
refer to any part of memory.  For instance, CGA display memory starts at
segment &HB800, offset 0, and goes on for 4000 bytes in text mode.  That
gives a pointer of &HB8000.  You can transfer from the screen to a variable
or vice versa.  For that matter, you can scroll the screen up, down, left, or
right by using the appropriate pointers.  Add two to the pointer to move it
to the next character or 160 to move it to the next row.  As I said, pointers
have all kinds of applications!  You don't need to worry about overlapping
memory-- if the two pointers, combined with the bytes to move, overlap at
some point, why, the MMove routine takes care of that for you.  It avoids
pointer conflicts.  MMove is a very efficient memory copying routine.

Suppose you've got a pointer and would like to convert it back to the
segment/offset address that BASIC understands.  That's no problem:

   MSplitPtr Ptr&, TSeg%, TOfs%

You might also want to fill an area of memory with a specified byte value,
perhaps making freshly-allocated memory zeroes, for example:

   MFill Ptr&, Value%, Bytes&

Finally, there may be occasions when you might want to transfer a single
character.  Rather than going through putting the character into a STRING*1,
getting the VARSEG/VARPTR, and using MJoinPtr&, there is a simpler method:

   MPutChr Ptr&, Ch$
   Ch$ = MGetChr$(Ptr&)

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas to start with.  I'll expand on the
uses of pointers and give further examples in future versions of BasWiz.
There are many, many possible uses for such capabilities.  Pointers and
memory management used to be the only real way in which BASIC could be
considered inferior to other popular languages-- that is no more!

NOTE:
   QuickBASIC may move its arrays around in memory!  Don't expect the address
   of an array to remain constant while your program is running.  Be sure to
   get the VARSEG/VARPTR for arrays any time you're not sure they're in the
   same location.  Among the things which can cause arrays to move are use of
   DIM, REDIM, or ERASE, and possibly calls to SUBs or FUNCTIONs.  I'm not
   sure if anything else may cause the arrays to move, so be cautious!

                              Telecommunications                       page 42



BASIC is unusual among languages in that it comes complete with built-in
telecommunications support.  Unfortunately, that support is somewhat crude.
Amongst other problems, it turns off the DTR when the program SHELLs or ends,
making it difficult to write doors for BBSes or good terminal programs.  It
also requires use of the /E switch for error trapping, since it generates
errors when line noise is encountered, and doesn't provide much control.  It
doesn't even support COM3 and COM4, which have been available for years.

BasWiz rectifies these troubles.  It allows comprehensive control over
communications, includes COM3 and COM4, and doesn't require error trapping.
It won't fiddle with the DTR unless you tell it to do so.  The one limitation
is that you may use only a single comm port at a time.

Before you can use communications, you must initialize the communications
handler.  If you didn't have BasWiz, you would probably use something like:

   OPEN "COM1:2400,N,8,1,RS,CS,DS" AS #1

With BasWiz, you do not have to set the speed, parity, and so forth.
Communications will proceed with whatever the current settings are, unless
you choose to specify your own settings.  When you initialize the comm
handler, you specify only the port number (1-4) and the size of the input and
output buffers (1-32,767 bytes):

   TCInit Port, InSize, OutSize, ErrCode

The size you choose for the buffers should be guided by how your program will
use communications.  Generally, a small output buffer of 128 bytes will be
quite adequate.  You may wish to expand it up to 1,500 bytes or so if you
expect to write file transfer protocols.  For the input buffer, you will want
perhaps 512 bytes for normal use.  For file transfer protocols, perhaps 1,500
bytes would be better.  If a high baud rate is used, or for some other reason
you might not be emptying the buffer frequently, you may wish to expand the
input buffer size to 4,000 bytes or more.

When you are done with the telecomm routines, you must terminate them.  In
BASIC, this would be done with something like:

   CLOSE #1

With the BasWiz routines, though, you would use this instead:

   TCDone

The BasWiz "TCDone" does not drop the DTR, unlike BASIC's "CLOSE".  This
means that the modem will not automatically be told to hang up.  With BasWiz,
you have complete control over the DTR with the TCDTR routine.  Use a value
of zero to drop the DTR or nonzero to raise the DTR:

   TCDTR DTRstate

                              Telecommunications                       page 43



You may set the speed of the comm port to any baud rate from 1-65,535.  If
you will be dealing with comm programs that were not written using BasWiz,
you may wish to restrict that to the more common rates: 300, 1200, 2400,
4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, and 57600.

   TCSpeed Baud&

The parity, word length, and stop bits can also be specified.  You may use
1-2 stop bits, 6-8 bit words, and parity settings of None, Even, Odd, Mark,
or Space.  Nearly all BBSes use settings of None, 8 bit words, and 1 stop
bit, although you will sometimes see Even, 7 bit words, and 1 stop bit.  The
other capabilities are provided for dealing with mainframes and other systems
which may require unusual communications parameters.

When specifying parity, only the first character in the string is used, and
uppercase/lowercase distinctions are ignored.  Thus, using either "none" or
"N" would specify that no parity is to be used.

   TCParms Parity$, WordLength, StopBits

If your program needs to be aware of when a carrier is present, it can check
the carrier detect signal from the modem with the TCCarrier function.  This
function returns zero if no carrier is present:

   IF TCCarrier THEN
      PRINT "Carrier detected"
   ELSE
      PRINT "No carrier"
   END IF

Suppose, though, that you need to know immediately when someone has dropped
the carrier?  It wouldn't be too convenient to have to spot TCCarrier
functions all over your program!  In that case, try the "ON TIMER" facility
provided by BASIC for keeping an eye on things.  It will enable you to check
the carrier at specified intervals and act accordingly.  Here's a brief
framework for writing such code:

   ON TIMER(30) GOSUB CarrierCheck
   TIMER ON
   ' ...your program goes here...
CarrierCheck:
   IF TCCarrier THEN              ' if the carrier is present...
      RETURN                      ' ...simply resume where we left off
   ELSE                           ' otherwise...
      RETURN Restart              ' ...return to the "Restart" label
   END IF

                              Telecommunications                       page 44



To get a character from the comm port, use the TCInkey$ function:

   ch$ = TCInkey$

To send a string to the comm port, use TCWrite:

   TCWrite St$

If you are dealing strictly with text, you may want to have a carriage return
and a linefeed added to the end of the string.  No problem:

   TCWriteLn St$

Note that the length of the output buffer affects how the TCWrite and
TCWriteLn routines work.  They don't actually send string directly to the
comm port.  Instead, they put the string into the output buffer, and it gets
sent to the comm port whenever the comm port is ready.  If there is not
enough room in the output buffer for the whole string, the TCWrite/TCWriteLn
routines are forced to wait until enough space has been cleared for the
string.  This can delay your program.  You can often avoid this delay simply
by making the output buffer larger.

If you'd like to know how many bytes are waiting in the input buffer or
output buffer, there are functions which will tell you:

   PRINT "Bytes in input buffer:"; TCInStat
   PRINT "Bytes in output buffer:"; TCOutStat

Finally, if you would like to clear the buffers for some reason, you can do
that too.  The following routines clear the buffers, discarding anything
which was waiting in them:

   TCFlushIn
   TCFlushOut

Don't forget to use TCDone to terminate the comm handler before ending your
program!  If you do, the computer will lock up.  Worse, it may not lock up
immediately, so forgetting TCDone can be very unpleasant.

                              Telecommunications                       page 45



Finally, there is a routine which allows you to handle ANSI codes in a
window.  Besides the IBM semi-ANSI display code subset, mock-ANSI music is
allowed.  This routine is designed as a subroutine that you can access via
GOSUB, since there are a number of variables that the routine needs to
maintain that would be a nuisance to pass as parameters, and QuickBASIC
unfortunately can't handle SUBs in $INCLUDE files (so SHARED won't work).
To use it, either include ANSI.BAS directly in your code, or use:

   REM $INCLUDE: 'ANSI.BAS'

Set St$ to the string to process, set Win% to the handle of the window to
which to display, and set Music% to zero if you don't want sounds or -1 if
you do want sounds.  Then:

   GOSUB ANSIprint

Note that the virtual screen tied to the window must be at least an 80 column
by 25 row screen, since ANSI expects that size.  You are also advised to have
an ON ERROR trap if you use ANSIprint with Music% = -1, just in case a "bad"
music sequence slips through and makes BASIC unhappy.  Check for ERR = 5
(Illegal Function Call).  I'll add a music handler later to avoid this.

To get some idea of how these routines all tie together in practice, see the
TERM.BAS example program.  It provides a simple "dumb terminal" program to
demonstrate the BasWiz comm handler.  Various command-line switches are
allowed:

   /43     use 43-line mode (EGA and VGA only)
   /COM2   use COM2
   /COM3   use COM3
   /COM4   use COM4
   /300    use 300 baud
   /1200   use 1200 baud
   /QUIET  ignore "ANSI" music

By default, the TERM.BAS program will use COM1 at 2400 baud with no parity, 8
bit words and 1 stop bit.  You can exit the program by pressing Alt-X.

                              Telecommunications                       page 46



The Xmodem file transfer protocol is currently supported for sending files
only.  It automatically handles any of the usual variants on the Xmodem
protocol: 128-byte or 1024-byte blocks, plus checksum or CRC error detection.
In other words, it is compatible with Xmodem (checksum), Xmodem CRC, and
Xmodem-1K (single-file Ymodem-like variant).

There are only two routines which must be used to transfer a file.  The first
is called once to initialize the transfer.  The second is called repeatedly
until the transfer is finished or aborted.  Complete status information is
returned by both routines.  You can ignore most of this information or
display it any way you please.

The initialization routine looks like this:

   StartXmodemSend Handle, Protocol$, Baud$, MaxRec, Record, EstTime$, ErrCode

Only the first three parameters are passed to the routine.  These are the
Handle of the file that you wish to send (use FOpen to get the handle) and
the Protocol$ that you wish to use ("Xmodem" or "Xmodem-1K"), and the current
Baud$.  On return, you will get an ErrCode if the other computer did not
respond, or MaxRec (the number of blocks to be sent), Record (the current
block number), and EstTime$ (an estimate of the time required to complete the
transfer.  The Protocol$ will have "CHK" or "CRC" added to it to indicate
whether checksum or CRC error detection is being used, depending on which the
receiver requested.

The secondary routine looks like this:

   XmodemSend Handle, Protocol$, MaxRec, Record, ErrCount, ErrCode

The ErrCode may be zero (no error), greater than zero (error reading file),
or less than zero (file transfer error, completion or abort).  See the
appendix on Error Codes for specific details.  The TERM.BAS example program
shows how these routines work together in practice.

The file accessed by the Xmodem routine will remain open.  Remember to close
it when the transfer is done (for whatever reason), using the FClose routine.

                              Telecommunications                       page 47



A few notes on the ins and outs of telecommunications...

The DTR signal is frequently used to control the modem.  When the DTR is
"raised" or "high", the modem knows that we're ready to do something.  When
the DTR is "dropped" or "low", the modem knows that we're not going to do
anything.  In most cases, this tells it to hang up or disconnect the phone
line.  Some modems may be set to ignore the DTR, in which case it will not
disconnect when the DTR is dropped.  Usually this can be fixed by changing a
switch on the modem.  On some modems, a short software command may suffice.

The DTR is generally the best way to disconnect.  The Hayes "ATH" command is
supposed to hang up, but it doesn't work very well.

The BasWiz comm handler makes sure the DTR is raised when TCInit is used.  It
does not automatically drop the DTR when TCDone is used, so you can keep the
line connected in case another program wants to use it.  If this is not
suitable, just use TCDTR to drop the DTR.  Your program must always use
TCDone before it exits, but it need only drop the DTR if you want it that
way.

If you want to execute another program via SHELL, it is ok to leave
communications running as long as control will return to your program when
the SHELLed program is done.  In that case, the input buffer will continue to
receive characters from the comm port unless the SHELLed program provides
its own comm support.  The output buffer will likewise continue to transmit
characters unless overruled.

An assortment of file transfer protocols will be provided in future versions
of BasWiz.  Among the ones supported will be Xmodem, Xmodem-1K, Ymodem
(batch), and Modem7 (batch).  I do not expect to support Kermit or Zmodem,
since they are unduly complicated.  You can handle any file transfer protocol
you like by SHELLing to an external protocol program, or of course you can
write your own support code.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 48



The virtual windowing system offers pop-up and collapsing windows, yes... but
that is just a small fraction of what it provides.  When you create a window,
the part that you see on the screen may be only a view port on a much larger
window, called a virtual screen.  You can make virtual screens of up to 255
rows long or 255 columns wide.  The only limitation is that any single
virtual screen must take up less than 65,520 bytes.  Each virtual screen is
treated much like the normal screen display, with simple replacements for the
standard PRINT, LOCATE, and COLOR commands.  Many other commands are provided
for additional flexibility.  The window on the virtual screen may be moved,
resized, or requested to display a different portion of the virtual screen.
If you like, you may choose to display a frame and/or title around a window.
When you open a new window, any windows under it are still there and can
still be updated-- nothing is ever destroyed unless you want it that way!
With the virtual windowing system, you get a tremendous amount of control for
a very little bit of work.

The current version of the virtual windowing system only allows text mode
screens to be used.  All standard text modes are supported, however.  This
includes 25x40 CGA screens, the standard 25x80 screen, and longer screens
such as the 43x80 EGA screen.  The virtual windowing system is designed for
computers that offer hardware-level compatibility with the IBM PC, which
includes almost all MS-DOS/PC-DOS computers in use today.



Terminology:
-----------

DISPLAY
   The actual screen.

SHADOW SCREEN
   This is a screen kept in memory which reflects any changes you make to
   windows.  Rather than making changes directly on the actual screen, the
   virtual windowing system works with a "shadow screen" for increased speed
   and flexibility.  You specify when to update the display from the shadow
   screen.  This makes any changes appear very smoothly.

VIRTUAL SCREEN
   This is a screen kept in memory which can be treated much like the actual
   screen.  You may choose to make a virtual screen any reasonable size.
   Every virtual screen will have a corresponding window.

WINDOW
   This is the part of a virtual screen which is actually displayed.  You
   might think of a window as a "view port" on a virtual screen.  A window
   may be smaller than its virtual screen or the same size.  It may have a
   frame or a title and can be moved or resized.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 49



Frankly, the virtual windowing system is one of those things that's more
difficult to explain than to use.  It's very easy to use, as a matter of
fact, but the basic concepts will need a little explanation.  Rather than
launching into a tedious and long-winded description of the system, I'm
going to take a more tutorial approach, giving examples and explaining as I
go along.  Take a look at the WDEMO.BAS program for additional insights.

Let's begin with the simplest possible scenario, where only a background
window is created.  This looks just like a normal screen.

   REM $INCLUDE: 'BASWIZ.BI'
   DEFINT A-Z
   Rows = 25: Columns = 80                         ' define display size
   WInit Rows, Columns, ErrCode                    ' initialize window system
   IF ErrCode THEN                                 ' stop if we couldn't...
      PRINT "Insufficient memory"
      END
   END IF
   Handle = 0                                      ' use background handle
   WWriteLn Handle, "This is going to be displayed on the background window."
   WWriteLn Handle, "Right now, that's the full screen."
   WUpdate                                         ' update the display
   WDone                                           ' terminate window system

What we just did was to display two lines on the screen-- nothing at all
fancy, but it gives you the general idea of how things work.  Let's take a
closer look at what the program does:

  - We INCLUDE the BASWIZ.BI definition file to let QuickBASIC know that
    we'll be using the BasWiz routines.

  - We define the size of the display using the integer variables Rows and
    Columns (you can use any variable names you want).  If you have an EGA
    display and had previously used WIDTH ,43 to go into 43x80 mode, you'd
    use "Rows = 43" here, for example.

  - We initialize the windowing system with WInit, telling it how large the
    display is.  It returns an error code if it is unable to initialize.

  - We define the Handle of the window that we want to use.  The "background
    window" is always available as handle zero, so we choose "Handle = 0".

  - We print two strings to the background window with WWriteLn, which is
    like a PRINT without a semicolon on the end (it moves to the next line).

  - At this point, only the shadow screen has been updated.  We're ready to
    display the information, so we use WUpdate to update the actual screen.

  - We're all done with the program, so we finish up with WDone.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 50



See, there's nothing to it!  We initialize the screen, print to it or
whatever else we need to do, tell the windowing system to update the display,
and when the program is done, we close up shop.

The background screen is always available.  It might help to think of it as a
virtual screen that's the size of the display.  The window on this virtual
screen is exactly the same size, so the entire virtual screen is displayed.
As with other virtual screens, you can print to it without disturbing
anything else.  That means you can treat the background screen the same way
regardless of whether it has other windows on top of it-- the other windows
just "cover" the background information, which will still be there.

This leads us to the topic of creating windows.  Both a virtual screen and a
window are created simultaneously-- remember, a window is just a view port on
a virtual screen.  The window can be the same size as the virtual screen, in
which case the entire virtual screen is visible (as with the background
window) or it can be smaller than the virtual screen, in which case just a
portion of the virtual screen will be visible at any one time.

A window is created like so:

   ' This is a partial program and can be inserted in the original example
   ' after the second WWriteLn statement...
   VRows = 43: VColumns = 80                       ' define virtual screen size
   WOpen VRows, VColumns, 1, 1, Rows, Columns, Handle, ErrCode ' create window
   IF ErrCode THEN                                 ' error if we couldn't...
      PRINT "Insufficient memory available"
      WDone                                        ' (or use an error handler)
      END
   END IF

What we have done here is to create a virtual screen of 43 rows by 80
columns.  The window will be the size of the display, so if you are in the
normal 25x80 mode, only the first 25 rows of the virtual screen will be
visible.  If you have an EGA or VGA in 43x80 mode, though, the entire virtual
screen will be visible!  So, this window lets you treat a screen the same way
regardless of the display size.

The Handle returned is used any time you want to print to this new window or
otherwise deal with it.  If you are using many windows, you might want to
keep an array of handles, to make it easier to keep track of which is which.

By default, a virtual screen is created with the following attributes:

  - The cursor is at (1,1), the upper left corner of the virtual screen.
  - The cursor size is 0 (invisible).
  - The text color is 7,0 (white foreground on a black background).
  - There is no title or frame.
  - The window starts at (1,1) in the virtual screen, which displays the
    area starting at the upper left corner of the virtual screen.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 51



When you create a new window, it becomes the "top" window, and will be
displayed on top of any other windows that are in the same part of the
screen.  Remember, you can print to a window or otherwise deal with it, even
if it's only partially visible or entirely covered by other windows.

Don't forget WUpdate!  None of your changes are actually displayed until
WUpdate is used.  You can make as many changes as you like before calling
WUpdate, which will display the results smoothly and at lightning speed.

We've created a window which is exactly the size of the display, but which
might well be smaller than its virtual screen.  Let's assume that the normal
25x80 display is being used, in which case our virtual screen (43x80) is
larger than the window.  We can still print to the virtual screen normally,
but if we print below line 25, the results won't be displayed.  What a
predicament!  How do we fix this?

The window is allowed to start at any given location in the virtual screen,
so if we want to see a different portion of the virtual screen, all we have
to do is tell the window to start somewhere else.  When the window is
created, it starts at the beginning of the virtual screen, coordinate (1,1).
The WView routine allows us to change this.

In our example, we're displaying a 43x80 virtual screen in a 25x80 window.
To begin with, then, rows 1-25 of the virtual screen are visible.  To make
rows 2-26 of the virtual screen visible, we simply do this:

   WView Handle, 2, 1

That tells the window to start at row 2, column 1 in the virtual screen.
Sounds easy enough, doesn't it?  Well, if not, don't despair.  Play with it
in the QuickBASIC environment a little until you get the hang of it.

You've noticed that the window doesn't need to be the same size as the
virtual screen.  Suppose we don't want it the same size as the display,
either... suppose we want it in a nice box, sitting out of the way in a
corner of the display?  Well, we could have created it that way to begin with
when we used WOpen.  Since we've already created it, though, let's take a
look at the routines to change the size of a window and to move it elsewhere.
The window can be made as small as 1x1 or as large as its virtual screen, and
it can be moved anywhere on the display you want it.

Let's make the window a convenient 10 rows by 20 columns:

   WSize Handle, 10, 20

And move it into the lower right corner of the display:

   WPlace Handle, 12, 55

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 52



Don't forget to call WUpdate or the changes won't be visible!  Note also that
we didn't really lose any text.  The virtual screen, which holds all the
text, is still there.  We've just changed the size and position of the
window, which is the part of the virtual screen that we see, so less of the
text (if there is any!) is visible.  If we made the window larger again, the
text in the window would expand accordingly.

If you were paying close attention, you noticed that we didn't place the
resized window flush against the corner of the display.  We left a little bit
of room so we can add a frame and a title.  Let's proceed to do just that.

Window frames are displayed around the outside of a window and will not be
displayed unless there is room to do so.  We have four different types of
standard frames available:

   0   (no frame)
   1   single lines
   2   double lines
   3   single horizontal lines, double vertical lines
   4   single vertical lines, double horizontal lines

We must also choose the colors for the frame.  It usually looks best if the
background color is the same background color as used by the virtual screen.
Let's go ahead and create a double-line frame in bright white on black:

   FType = 2: Fore = 15: Back = 0
   WFrame Handle, FType, Fore, Back

If you'd rather not use the default frame types, there's ample room to get
creative!  Frames 5-9 can be defined any way you please.  They are null by
default.  To create a new frame type, you must specify the eight characters
needed to make the frame: upper left corner, upper middle columns, upper
right corner, left middle rows, right middle rows, lower left corner, lower
middle columns, and lower right corner.

   +----------------------------------------+
   |  Want a plain text frame like this?    |
   |  Use the definition string "+-+||+-+"  |
   +----------------------------------------+

The above window frame would be defined something like this:

   Frame = 5
   FrameInfo$ = "+-+||+-+"
   WUserFrame Frame, FrameInfo$

Of course, you can choose any values you like.  As always, the names of the
variables can be anything, as long as you name them consistently within your
program.  You can even use constants if you prefer:

   WUserFrame 5, "+-+||+-+"

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 53



If you use a frame, you can also have a "shadow", which provides a sort of
3-D effect.  The shadow can be made up of any character you choose, or it can
be entirely transparent, in which case anything under the shadow will change
to the shadow colors.  This latter effect can be quite nice.  I've found that
it works best for me when I use a dim foreground color with a black
background-- a foreground color of 8 produces wonderful effects on machines
that support it (it's "bright black", or dark gray; some displays will show
it as entirely black, though, so it may not always work the way you want).
For a transparent shadow, select CHR$(255) as the shadow character.  You can
turn the shadow off with either a null string or CHR$(0).

   Shadow$ = CHR$(255)                     ' transparent shadow
   Fore = 8: Back = 0                      ' dark gray on black
   WShadow Handle, Shadow$, Fore, Back

A shadow will only appear if there is also a frame, and if there is enough
space for it on the screen.  Currently, there is only one type of shadow,
which appears on the right and bottom sides of the frame.  It effectively
makes the frame wider and longer by one character.

We can have a title regardless of whether a frame is present or not.  Like
the frame, the title is displayed only if there is enough room for it.  If
the window is too small to accommodate the full title, only the part of the
title that fits will be displayed.  The maximum length of a title is 70
characters.  Titles have their own colors.

   Title$ = "Wonderful Window!"
   Fore = 0: Back = 7
   WTitle Handle, Title$, Fore, Back

To get rid of a title, just use a null title string (Title$ = "").

It may be convenient to set up a window that isn't always visible-- say, for
a help window, perhaps.  The window could be set up in advance, then shown
whenever requested using just one statement:

   WHide Handle, Hide

You can make a window invisible by using any nonzero value for Hide, or make
it reappear by setting Hide to zero.  As always, the change will only take
effect after WUpdate is used.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 54



When WWrite or WWriteLn gets to the end of a virtual screen, they normally
scroll the "screen" up to make room for more text.  This is usually what you
want, of course, but there are occasions when it can be a nuisance.  The
automatic scrolling can be turned off or restored like so:

   WScroll Handle, AutoScroll

There are only a few more ways of dealing with windows themselves.  After
that, I'll explain the different things you can do with text in windows and
how to get information about a specific window or virtual screen.

If you have a lot of windows, one window may be on top of another, obscuring
part or all of the window(s) below.  In order to make sure a window is
visible, all you need to do is to put it on top, right?  Hey, is this easy or
what?!

   WTop Handle

You may also need to "unhide" the window if you used WHide on it previously.

Note that the background window will always be the background window.  You
can't put handle zero, the background window, on top.  What?  You say you
need to do that?!  Well, that's one of the ways you can use the WCopy
routine.  WCopy copies one virtual screen to another one of the same size:

   WCopy FromHandle, ToHandle

You can copy the background window (or any other window) to another window.
The new window can be put on top, resized, moved, or otherwise spindled and
mutilated.  The WDEMO program uses this trick.

We've been through how to open windows, print to them, resize them and move
them around, among other things.  We've seen how to put a frame and a title
on a window and pop it onto the display.  If you're a fan of flashy displays,
though, you'd probably like to be able to make a window "explode" onto the
screen or "collapse" off.  It's the little details like that which make a
program visually exciting and professional-looking.  I wouldn't disappoint
you by leaving something fun like that out!

Since we're using a virtual windowing system rather than just a plain ol'
ordinary window handler, there's an extra benefit.  When a window explodes or
collapses, it does so complete with its title, frame, shadow, and even its
text.  This adds rather nicely to the effect.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 55



To "explode" a window, we just set up all its parameters the way we normally
would-- open the window, add a title or frame if we like, print any text that
we want displayed, and set the screen position.  Then we use WExplode to zoom
the window from a tiny box up to its full size:

   WExplode Handle

The "collapse" routine works similarly.  It should be used only when you are
through with a window, because it closes the window when it's done.  The
window is collapsed from its full size down to a tiny box, then eliminated
entirely:

   WCollapse Handle

Note that WExplode and WCollapse automatically use WUpdate to update the
display.  You do not need to use WUpdate yourself and you should make sure
that the screen is the way you want it displayed before you call either
routine.

The WCollapse and WExplode routines were written in BASIC, so they'll be easy
to customize just the way you want them if you register BasWiz and get the
source code.  They're not particularly difficult routines, however, so you
might want to design a set of your own similar routines just for the
exercise.  All it takes is moving and resizing the windows.

The great thing about being a programmer is that you can do it your way.
Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce!  Might be fun to add some sound effects
to those exploding windows, hmmm?  I'll do that in a later version, but don't
feel obliged to wait for me!

That's it for the windows.  We've been through all the "tricky stuff".  There
are a number of useful things you can do with a virtual screen, though,
besides printing to it with WWriteLn.  Let's take a look at what we can do.

WWriteLn is fine if you want to use a "PRINT St$" sort of operation.  Suppose
you don't want to move to a new line afterward, though?  In BASIC, you'd use
something like "PRINT St$;" (with a semicolon).  With the virtual windowing
system, you use WWrite, which is called just like WWriteLn:

   WWrite Handle, St$

There are also routines that work like CLS, COLOR and LOCATE:

   WClear Handle
   WColor Handle, Fore, Back
   WLocate Handle, Row, Column

The WClear routine is not quite like CLS in that it does not affect the
cursor position.  If you want the cursor "homed", use WLocate.

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 56



Note that the coordinates for WLocate are based on the virtual screen, not
the window.  If you move the cursor to a location outside the view port
provided by the window, it will disappear.  Speaking of disappearing cursors,
you might have noticed that our WLocate doesn't mimic LOCATE exactly: it
doesn't provide for controlling the cursor size.  Don't panic!  There's
another routine available for that:

   WCursor Handle, CSize

The CSize value may range from zero (in which case the cursor will be
invisible) to the maximum size allowed by your display adapter.  This will
always be at least eight.

Now, since each virtual screen is treated much like the full display, you may
be wondering what happens if the cursor is "on" in more than one window.
Does that mean multiple cursors are displayed?  Well, no.  That would get a
little confusing!  Only the cursor for the top window is displayed.  If you
put a different window on top, the cursor for that window will be activated
and the cursor for the old top window will disappear.  The virtual windowing
system remembers the cursor information for each window, but it only actually
displays the cursor for the window that's on top.

In addition to the usual screen handling, the windowing system provides four
new capabilities which you may find very handy.  These are routines to insert
and delete both characters and rows.  This is done at the current cursor
position within a selected virtual screen:

   WDelChr Handle
   WDelLine Handle
   WInsChr Handle
   WInsLine Handle

These routines can also be used for scrolling.  Remember, the display isn't
updated until you use WUpdate, and then it's updated all at once.  You can
use any of the routines multiple times and the display will still be updated
perfectly smoothly-- all the real work goes on behind the scenes!

When you are done with a virtual screen and no longer need it, you can
dispose of it like so:

   WClose Handle

All of the information that can be "set" can also be retrieved.  That's
useful in general, of course, but it's also a great feature for writing
portable subprograms.  You can create subprograms that will work with any
virtual screen, since it can retrieve any information it needs to know about
the virtual screen or its window.  That's power!

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 57



Here is a list of the available window data retrieval routines:

   WGetColor Handle, Fore, Back
   ' gets the current foreground and background colors

   WGetCursor Handle, CSize
   ' gets the cursor size

   WGetFrame Handle, Frame, Fore, Back
   ' gets the frame type and frame colors

   WGetLocate Handle, Row, Column
   ' gets the cursor position

   WGetPlace Handle, Row, Column
   ' gets the starting position of a window on the display

   WGetScroll Handle, AutoScroll
   ' gets the status of auto-scroll (scrolling at the end of a virtual screen)

   Shadow$ = SPACE$(1)
   WGetShadow Handle, Shadow$, Fore, Back
   ' gets the shadow character (CHR$(0) if there's no shadow) and colors

   WGetSize Handle, Rows, Columns
   ' gets the size of a window

   Title$ = SPACE$(70)
   WGetTitle Handle, Title$, TLen, Fore, Back
   Title$ = LEFT$(Title$, TLen)
   ' gets the title string (null if there's no title) and title colors

   WGetTop Handle
   ' gets the handle of the top window

   FrameInfo$ = SPACE$(8)
   WGetUFrame$ Frame, FrameInfo$
   ' gets the specification for a given user-defined frame type

   WGetView Handle, Row, Column
   ' gets the starting position of a window within a virtual screen

   WGetVSize Handle, Rows, Columns
   ' gets the size of a virtual screen

   WHidden Handle, Hidden
   ' tells you whether a window is visible

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 58



As well as displaying information in a window, you will frequently want to
allow for getting input from the user.  Of course, INKEY$ will still work
fine, but that's not an effective way of handling more than single
characters.  The virtual windowing system includes a flexible string input
routine which is a lot more powerful:

   WInput Handle, Valid$, ExitCode$, ExtExitCode$, MaxLength, St$, ExitKey$

The Valid$ variable allows you to specify a list of characters which may be
entered.  If you use a null string (""), any character will be accepted.

ExitCode$ specifies the normal keys that can be used to exit input.  You'll
probably want to use a carriage return, CHR$(13), for this most of the time.
You can also specify exit on extended key codes like arrow keys and function
keys via ExtExitCode$.

MaxLength is the maximum length of the string you want.  Use zero to get the
longest possible string.  The length may go up to the width of the virtual
screen, minus one character.  The window will be scrolled sideways as needed
to accommodate the full length of the string.

The St$ variable is used to return the entered string, but you can also use
it to pass a default string to the routine.

ExitKey$ returns the key that was used to exit input.

A fairly strong set of editing capabilities is available through WInput.
The editing keys can be overridden by ExitCode$ or ExtExitCode$, but by
default they include support for both the cursor keypad and WordStar:

   Control-S   LeftArrow    move left once
   Control-D   RightArrow   move right once
   Control-V   Ins          switch between insert and overstrike modes
   Control-G   Del          delete current character
   Control-H   Backspace    destructive backspace
               Home         move to the start of input
               End          move to the end of input

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 59



Pop-up menus have become very popular in recent years.  Fortunately, they are
a natural application for virtual windows!  BasWiz provides a pop-up menuing
routine which allows you to have as many as 255 choices-- the window will be
scrolled automatically to accommodate your "pick list", with a highlight bar
indicating the current selection.

The pop-up menu routine uses a window which you've already set up, so you can
use any of the normal window options-- frames, titles, shadows, etc.  You
must provide a virtual screen large enough to hold your entire pick list; the
window itself can be any size at all.

The pick list is passed to WMenuPopUp through a string array.  You can
dimension this array in any range that suits you.  The returned selection
will be the relative position in the array (1 for the first item, etc); if
the menu was aborted, 0 will be returned instead.

The current window colors will be used for the "normal" colors.  You specify
the desired highlight colors when calling the pop-up menu routine.

   Result = WMenuPopUp(Handle, PickList$(), HiFore, HiBack)

The mouse is not supported, since BasWiz does not yet have mouse routines.
However, scrolling can be accomplished with any of the more common methods:
up and down arrows, WordStar-type Control-E and Control-X, or Lotus-type tab
and backtab.  The ESCape key can be used to abort without choosing an option.

On exit, the menu window will remain in its final position, in case you wish
to pop up a related window next to it or something similar.  Since it's just
an ordinary window, you can use WClose or WCollapse if you prefer to get rid
of it.

The WMenuPopUp routine was written in BASIC, so you will find it easy to
modify to your tastes if you register BasWiz.  It was written with extra
emphasis on comments and clarity, since I know many people will want to
customize this routine!

                         The Virtual Windowing System                  page 60



There are two more routines which allow the virtual windowing system to work
on a wide variety of displays: WFixColor and WSnow.

Chances are, as a software developer you have a color display.  However,
there are many people out there who have monochrome displays, whether due to
preference, a low budget, or use of notebook-style computers with mono LCD or
plasma screens.  WFixColor allows you to develop your programs in color while
still supporting monochrome systems.  It tells the VWS whether to keep the
colors as specified or to translate them to their monochrome equivalents:

   WFixColor Convert%

Set Convert% to zero if you want true color (default), or to any other value
if you want the colors to be translated to monochrome.  In the latter case,
the translation will be done based on the relative brightness of the
foreground and background colors.  The result is guaranteed to be readable on
a monochrome system if it's readable on a color system.  You should check the
results on your system to make sure that such things as highlight bars still
appear highlighted, however.

In the case of some of the older or less carefully designed CGA cards, the
high-speed displays of the virtual windowing system can cause the display to
flicker annoyingly.  You can get rid of the flicker at the expense of slowing
the display:

   WSnow Remove%

Set Remove% to zero if there is no problem with "snow" or flickering
(default), or to any other value if you need "snow removal".  Using snow
removal will slow down the display substantially, which may be a problem if
you update (WUpdate) it frequently.

Note that you can't detect either of these cases automatically with perfect
reliability.  Not all CGA cards have flicker problems.  Monochrome displays
may be attached to CGA cards and the computer won't know the difference.  A
VGA with a paper-white monitor may well think it has color, and will mostly
act like it, but some "color" combinations can be very difficult to read.
While you can self-configure the program to some extent using the GetDisplay
routine (see Other Routines), you should also provide command-line switches
so that the user can override your settings.  Microsoft generally uses "/B"
to denote a monochrome ("black and white") display, so you may want to follow
that as a standard.  I would suggest "/F" to turn on CGA flicker suppression.

And that, folks, is all there is to it.  See WDEMO.BAS and TERM.BAS for
working examples.  Also see "Telecommunications" for information about a
routine which handles ANSI display and music codes; it displays to the window
of your choice.

                                Other Routines                         page 61



There are a number of routines for which I couldn't find a specific category.

To see how much expanded memory is available, use the GetEMS function.  It'll
return zero if there is no expanded memory installed:

   PRINT "Kbytes of expanded memory:"; GetEMS

The GetDisplay routine tells what kind of display adapter is active and
whether it's hooked up to a color monitor.  The only time it can't detect the
monitor type is on CGA setups (it assumes "color").  It's a good idea to
allow a "/B" switch for your program so the user can specify if a monochrome
monitor is attached to a CGA.

   GetDisplay Adapter, Mono
   IF Mono THEN
      PRINT "Monochrome monitor"
   ELSE
      PRINT "Color monitor"
   END IF
   SELECT CASE Adapter
      CASE 1: PRINT "MDA"
      CASE 2: PRINT "Hercules"
      CASE 3: PRINT "CGA"
      CASE 4: PRINT "EGA"
      CASE 5: PRINT "MCGA"
      CASE 6: PRINT "VGA"
   END SELECT

The ScreenSize routine returns the number of rows and columns on the display
(text modes only):

   ScreenSize Rows%, Columns%

                             Miscellaneous Notes                       page 62



The virtual windowing system allows up to 16 windows to be open at a time,
including the background window, which is opened automatically.  This is
subject to available memory, of course.

The far string handler allows up to 65,535 strings of up to 255 characters
each, subject to available memory.  When the handler needs additional memory
for string storage, it allocates more in blocks of 16 Kbytes.  If that much
memory is not available, an "out of memory" error will be generated (BASIC
error number 7).  You can check the size of the available memory pool using
the SETMEM function provided by QuickBASIC.

The communications handler only allows one comm port to be used at a time.
This will change in a future version of BasWiz.

The file handler does not allow you to combine Write mode with Text mode or
input buffering.  This will change in a future version of BasWiz.

A certain lack of speed is inherent in BCD math, especially if you require
high precision.  The division, root, and trig routines in particular are
quite slow.  I'll attempt to improve this in the future, but the routines are
already fairly well optimized, so don't expect miracles.  Precision costs!

The fraction routines are much faster, but they have a much smaller range.
I'll have to do some experimenting on that.  It may prove practical to use a
subset of the BCD routines to provide an extended range for fractions without
an unreasonable loss in speed.

All routines are designed to be as bomb-proof as possible.  If you pass an
invalid value to a routine which does not return an error code, it will
simply ignore the value.

It's always possible that a problem has escaped notice.  If you run into
something that you believe to be a bug or incompatibility, please tell me
about it, whether you've registered BasWiz or not.

Do you like what you see?  Tell me what you like, what you don't like, and
what you'd be interested in seeing in future versions!  Chances are good that
I'll use your suggestions.  If you know of a good reference book or text
file, I'd like to hear about that too!  You can reach me through U.S. Mail or
through several of the international BASIC conferences on BBSes.

                             Miscellaneous Notes                       page 63



The EGA graphics routines are designed for use with EGAs having at least 256K
RAM on board.  They will not operate properly on old 64K EGA systems.

Image loading (.MAC and .PCX) is quite slow.  The bulk of the code is in
BASIC at this point, to make it easier for me to extend the routines to cover
other graphics modes.  They will be translated to assembly later.

The G#Write and G#WriteLn services support three different fonts: 8x8, 8x14,
and 8x16.  The default font is always 8x8, providing the highest possible
text density.  QuickBASIC, on the other hand, allows only one font with a
text density of as close to 80x25 as possible.

The G#Write and G#WriteLn services interpret ASCII control characters, i.e.
CHR$(0) - CHR$(31), according to the more standard handling used by DOS
rather than the esoteric interpretation offered by QuickBASIC.  This is not
exactly a limitation, but it could conceivably cause confusion if your
program happens to use these characters.  The ASCII interpretation works as
follows:

    Code       Meaning
    ====       =======
      7        Bell      (sound a beep through the speaker)
      8        Backspace (destructive: eliminates the previous character)
      9        Tab       (based on 8-character tab fields)
     10        LineFeed  (move down one line, keep current column)
     12        FormFeed  (clear the screen)
     13        Return    (move to the start of the current line)

G#MirrorH will only work properly on images with byte alignment!  This means
that the width of the image must be evenly divisible by four if SCREEN 1 is
used, or evenly divisible by eight if SCREEN 2 is used.

The graphics routines provide little error checking and will not do clipping
(which ignores points outside the range of the graphics mode). If you specify
coordinates which don't exist, the results will be unusual at best.  Try to
keep those values within the proper range!

A very few of the graphics routines are slower than their counterparts in
QuickBASIC.  These are mostly drawing diagonal lines and filling boxes.  I
hope to get these better optimized in a future release.  The GET/PUT image
replacements are quite slow, but that's strictly temporary!  I rushed 'em in
by special request from a registered BasWiz owner.

                             Miscellaneous Notes                       page 64



If you use PRINT in conjunction with GN4Write or GN4WriteLn, be sure to save
the cursor position before the PRINT and restore it afterwards.  BASIC and
BasWiz share the same cursor position, but each interprets it to mean
something different.

The GN0 (360x480x256) and GN1 (320x400x256) routines use nonstandard VGA
modes.  The GN1 routines should work on just about any VGA, however.  The GN0
routines will work on many VGAs, but are somewhat less likely to work than
the GN1 routines due to the techniques involved.

The GN0Write, GN0WriteLn, GN1Write and GN1WriteLn routines are somewhat slow
in general and quite slow when it comes to scrolling the screen. These
problems are related to peculiarities of these modes that I'm still grappling
with.  They will hopefully be improved in a future release.

The G1Border routine is normally used to select the background (and border)
color for SCREEN 1 mode.  It can also be used in SCREEN 2 mode, where it will
change the foreground color instead.  Note that this may produce peculiar
results if an EGA or VGA is used and it isn't locked into "CGA" mode, so be
careful if your program may run on systems with displays other than true CGAs.

GET/PUT images have a lot of possibilities that Microsoft has never touched
on.  I'll be exploring this extensively in future versions.  Among other
things, expect the ability to change the colors, rotate the image, and
translate the image from one graphics mode format to another.  Enlarging and
shrinking the image will also be a good bet.

Note that you can GET an image in SCREEN 1 and PUT it in SCREEN 2!  It'll be
shaded instead of in colors.  This is a side-effect of the CGA display format.

The first two elements of a GET/PUT array (assuming it's an integer array)
tells you the size of the image.  The first element is the width and the
second is the height, in pixels.  Actually, that's not quite true.  Divide
the first element by 2 for the width if the image is for SCREEN 1, or by 8 if
for SCREEN 13.

                                  Error Codes                          page 65



The expression evaluator returns the following error codes:

   0    No error, everything went fine
   2    A number was expected but not found
   4    Unbalanced parentheses
   8    The expression string had a length of zero
   9    The expression included an attempt to divide by zero



The far string handler does not return error codes.  If an invalid string
handle is specified for FSSet, it will be ignored; if for FSGet, a null
string will be returned.  If you run out of memory for far strings, an "out
of memory" error will be generated (BASIC error #7).  You can prevent this by
checking available memory beforehand with the SETMEM function provided by
QuickBASIC.  Far string space is allocated as needed in blocks of just over
16 Kbytes, or 16,400 bytes to be exact.



The telecommunications handler returns the following error codes for TCInit:

   0    No error, everything A-Ok
   1    The comm handler is already installed (you tried to install it twice)
   2    Invalid comm port specified
   3    Not enough memory available for input and output buffers



The telecommunications handler returns these error codes for Xmodem Send:

 -13    FATAL   : Abort due to selection of an unsupported transfer protocol
 -12    FATAL   : Abort due to excessive errors
 -11    FATAL   : Abort (by keyboard <ESC> or receiver CANcel request)
  -5    WARNING : Checksum or CRC error
  -1    WARNING : Time-out error (the receiver didn't respond)
   0    DONE    : No error, transfer completed ok
  >0    ERROR   : Problem reading from the file (see file error codes)

                                 Error Codes                           page 66



The file services return the following error codes:
(The asterisk "*" is used to identify so-called "critical errors")

   0    No error
   1    Invalid function number (usually means "invalid parameter(s)")
   2    File not found
   3    Path not found
   4    Too many open files
   5    Access denied (probably "write to read-only file")
   6    Invalid file handle
   7    Memory control blocks destroyed
   8    Insufficient memory (usually RAM, sometimes disk)
   9    Incorrect memory pointer specified
  15    Invalid drive specified
* 19    Tried to write on a write-protected disk
* 21    Drive not ready
* 23    Disk data error
* 25    Disk seek error
* 26    Unknown media type
* 27    Sector not found
* 28    Printer out of paper
* 29    Write fault
* 30    Read fault
* 31    General failure
* 32    Sharing violation
* 33    Lock violation
* 34    Invalid disk change
  36    Sharing buffer overflow



A "critical error" is one that would normally give you the dreaded prompt:

   A>bort, R>etry, I>gnore, F>ail?

Such errors generally require some action on the part of the user.  For
instance, they may need to close a floppy drive door or replace the paper in
a printer.  If a critical error occurs on a hard drive, it may indicate a
problem in the drive hardware or software setup.  In that case, the problem
may possibly be cleared up by "CHKDSK /F", which should be executed directly
from the DOS command line (do not execute this by SHELL).

                               Troubleshooting                         page 67



Problem:
   QB says "subprogram not defined".

Solution:
   The definition file was not included.  Your program must contain the line
      REM $INCLUDE: 'BASWIZ.BI'
   before any executable code in your program.  You should also start
   QuickBASIC with
      QB /L BASWIZ
   so it knows to use the BasWiz library.


Problem:
   LINK says "unresolved external reference".

Solution:
   Did you specify BasWiz as the library when you used LINK?  You should!
   The BASWIZ.LIB file must be in the current directory or along a path
   specified by the LIB environment variable (like PATH, but for LIB files).


Problem:
   The virtual windowing system doesn't display anything.

Solution:
   Perhaps you left out the WUpdate routine?  If so, the shadow screen is not
   reflected to the actual screen and nothing will appear.  The screen also
   needs to be in text mode (either no SCREEN statement or SCREEN 0).
   Finally, only the default "page zero" is supported on color monitors.


Problem:
   The virtual windowing system causes the display to flicker on CGAs.

Solution:
   Use the WSnow routine to get rid of it.  This will, unfortunately, slow
   the display down severely.  You might want to upgrade your display card!


Problem:
   QuickBASIC doesn't get along with the Hercules display routines.

Solution:
   Are you using an adapter which includes Hercules mode along with EGA or
   VGA mode?  QuickBASIC doesn't like that, since it thinks you'll be using
   EGA or VGA mode.  Use the stand-alone compiler (BC.EXE) instead of the
   environment (QB.EXE) and you should be fine.  You might also consider
   getting a separate Herc adapter and monochrome monitor.  It's possible to
   combine a Hercules monochrome adapter with a CGA, EGA or VGA.

                               Troubleshooting                         page 68



Problem:
   QB says "out of memory" (or "range out of bounds" on a DIM or REDIM).

Solution:
   If you're using the memory management/pointer routines, you've probably
   allocated too much memory!  You need to leave some for QuickBASIC.  Use
   the SETMEM function provided by BASIC to determine how much memory is
   available before allocating memory.  The amount needed by QuickBASIC will
   depend on your program.  The primary memory-eaters are arrays and
   recursive subprograms or functions.

   Many of the BasWiz routines need to allocate memory, including the virtual
   window manager, telecommunications handler, and memory management system.
   Besides checking with SETMEM to make sure there's memory to spare, don't
   forget to check the error codes returned by these routines to make sure
   they're working properly!


Problem:
   The cursor acts funny (appears when it shouldn't or vice versa).

Solution:
   Try locking your EGA or VGA into a specific video mode using the utility
   provided with your display adapter.  Cursor problems are usually related
   either to "auto mode detection" or older EGAs.


Problem:
   The BCD trig functions return weird results.

Solution:
   Make sure you've made room in your BCD size definition for some digits to
   the left of the decimal as well as to the right!  Calculations with large
   numbers are needed to return trig functions with high accuracy.


Problem:
   The G#MirrorH routine is -almost- working right, but the results are
   truncated or wrapped to one side.

Solution:
   Make your GET image a tad wider!  The number of pixels wide must be evenly
   divisible by four in SCREEN 1, or by eight in SCREEN 2.

                            History and Philosophy                     page 69



"History," you say.  "Philosophy.  What the heck does that have to do with a
BASIC library?  Yuck!  Go away and leave me alone!"

Ok.  This section is not strictly necessary for using BasWiz.  If you're not
interested, you can certainly avoid reading this without ill effects.  "Suit
yourself," he said with a bow and a flourish.

Still here?  Thank you!  I'll try to keep it short.

Back in 'bout 1984 or so, I created ADVBAS, one of the very first assembly
language libraries for BASIC.  That was for IBM BASCOM 1.0, well before
QuickBASIC came out.  I created the library for my own use and ended up
making a moderately successful shareware project out of it.

ADVBAS was designed in bits and pieces that came along whenever I felt like
adding to the library or needed a new capability.  The routines were designed
at a low level, with most of the actual work needed to accomplish anything
useful left to BASIC.  All this resulted in a decent amount of flexibility
but also a good deal of chaos as new routines provided capabilities that
overlapped with old routines.  Although I tried to keep the calling sequence
reasonably standardized, it didn't always work out that way.  Then too, the
library was designed well before the neat capabilities of QuickBASIC 4.0 came
into being and couldn't take good advantage of them.

Second came ProBas, a commercial version of ADVBAS.  ProBas was a vastly more
powerful superset of the ADVBAS library.  Unfortunately, it suffered from the
same flaws.  No old routines could be discarded or even modified if at all
possible, to provide compatibility from one version to the next.  The lack of
thought inherent in the original design caused a mad proliferation of
routines, many overlapping, most still low-level and hard to use.  At version
5.0 (not yet released at the time I write this), there are over 800 different
routines-- something for everyone, to be sure, but tending towards complete
pandemonium.

The BasWiz project is a third-generation library.  It is designed to overcome
the liabilities I've encountered with ADVBAS and every other library I've
seen for BASIC.  Rather than being put together haphazardly, one routine at a
time, I have designed BasWiz as a coordinated collection.  The virtual
windowing system is an excellent example of this.  Rather than having
separate print routines, window routines, screen saving routines, virtual
screen routines and all the rest, it is all combined into one single
package.  The routines are designed at a high level, providing a maximum of
functionality with a minimum of programming effort.  The gritty details are
kept hidden inside the library where you need never deal with them.  Consider
the apparent simplicity of the far string handler!  Many more capabilities
will be added in future versions, but... very carefully.

                            History and Philosophy                     page 70



This library represents the culmination of many years of experience in the
fields of BASIC and assembly language programming.  I have spared no effort.
It's the best I can offer and I hope you'll forgive me for taking some pride
in my work!  If you find this library powerful and easy to use, I'll count my
efforts a great success.

As you might have guessed, I'm not exactly in it "just for the money."
Nonetheless, money is always nice!  If you like BasWiz, please do register.
That will enable me to continue to upgrade my equipment and reference library
so I can design more advanced BasWiz routines.

                            Using BasWiz with PDQ                      page 71



Most of the BasWiz routines will work with current versions of PDQ without
any modification.  The major exceptions are the expression evaluator, the BCD
and fraction math routines, and the polygon-generating graphics routines.
These should work fine once Crescent adds floating-point support to PDQ (I
understand this will be included in a new version to be released soon).

The .EXE files that come with the BasWiz library are LINKed with PDQ, which
is why they're so small.

Older versions of Crescent Software's PDQ library do not support the SETMEM
function, which is required by many BasWiz routines.  If your version of PDQ
is before v2.10, you must LINK in the SETMEM stub provided with BasWiz:

   LINK program+PDQSTUB/NOD,,NUL,BASWIZ+PDQ;

If you use LINK differently, that's fine.  The only thing necessary is to
make sure "+PDQSTUB" is listed after the name of your program as the first
LINK argument.  Use of /EX and other LINK parameters is no problem.  Use of
other libraries, if any, is also supported.  I've found that, for some
reason, PDQ usually wants to be the last library listed, by the way.

Crescent thoughtfully provided me with a free copy of PDQ in order that I
might resolve any incompatibilities between it and BasWiz.  If you are not
familiar with PDQ, it is a replacement library for BASIC's own runtime
libraries.  While not providing every capability of plain QuickBASIC, it
allows you to create substantially smaller EXE files for those programs that
qualify.  Support is currently lacking for floating point (single/double
precision) numbers, music, and graphics, among other things.  I understand
that these features will be available in future revisions.  Communications
support is available as an add-on package.    PDQ also adds new capabilities
which are quite impressive, such as being able to write small TSRs in BASIC.
Check with Crescent Software for more recent details.

                                  Credits                              page 72



For some of the reference works I have used in writing BasWiz, see the
BIBLIO.TXT file.

Special thanks to Howard Mencher (aka Dudeman Howie) for his thorough and
attentive beta-testing.

I am also indebted to the following people, among others:

Bill Cliver, president of F & I Controls (Arizona), which markets software
and hardware solutions for every aspect of car dealerships.

Mike Welch, co-sysop of The Shipyard BBS, the best BASIC support BBS that
I've ever encountered.  Among other fine acts, he is responsible for the
S&B4EGA and VGABOX demonstration programs which accompany BasWiz.  The
Shipyard is at 214-686-1962 (Texas)-- use the name "Quick Basic" and the
password "Quickshare" for instant access.

The inverse hyperbolic trig functions are based on a set of BASIC routines by
Kerry Mitchell.

The 360x480 256-color VGA mode was made possible by John Bridges' VGAKIT
library for C.  Two of the most vital low-level routines are based directly
on code from VGAKIT.  If you use C, check your local BBS for this library.
Last I looked, VGAKIT41.ZIP was the current version.

The 320x400 VGA mode was made possible by Michael Abrash's graphics articles
in Programmer's Journal.  His column alone is worth the subscription.

Definicon Corp very kindly released a public-domain program called SAMPLE.C
which shows how to access the 64k banks used by extended VGA 256-color modes.
This was the key to the GN5xxx routines (the so-called "tech ref" section of
my SuperVGA manual referred me to IBM's VGA docs, which would be utterly
useless in accessing these modes).  Since bank switching turns out to be
quite trivial, this is a rather pathetic lack in the BOCA Research, Inc.,
documentation (and hardly contributes to the use of SuperVGA modes).