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

Text File | 1991-11-07 | 8KB | 180 lines

BASWIZ 1.7, 11/08/91:

   A bug in the FracCompare% (compare fractions) function has been fixed.  It
   wouldn't correctly compare two numbers if they had different signs.

   Scrolling in virtual windows had been turned OFF by default.  It should
   have been turned ON by default.  This has been corrected.

   The BASIC far strings provided by the BC7 ("PDS") compiler are now
   supported.  This means you can use BASWIZ in the QBX environment.  Only
   the registered version provides this feature, since you must recompile the
   BASIC sources with whatever PDS version you have.

   The assembly language sources have been converted from OPTASM to MASM 6.0.

   It has been brought to my attention that not everyone needs the full power
   and complexity of the virtual windowing system.  So, I've added mode 0 to
   the graphics routines.  This includes graphics-style support (such as line
   drawing and banners) as well as fast text handling.  Unusual text modes
   (e.g., 132x60 SVGA text mode) are also supported.



BASWIZ 1.6, 09/11/91:

   Support for extended 256-color modes has been added to allow use of
   640x350, 640x400, 640x480, and 1024x768 modes with Tseng-based SuperVGAs
   that provide such modes.  Other 256-color modes which use the same paging
   scheme are also supported (you may specify the BIOS mode number and
   resolution). Since my monitor doesn't like the 800x600 256-color mode for
   some reason, I was unable to test this resolution, but the routines should
   support it.

   The various EGA/VGA character set sizes are now supported.  This allows
   use of either 25 or 43 rows in SCREEN 9 and 10, and either 30 or 60 rows
   in SCREEN 11 and SCREEN 12.

   Several graphics modes had a bug in scrolling.  It's gone.

   The virtual window system had a bug in WPlace-- it wouldn't work properly
   when the window width or height was equal to the virtual screen width or
   height, that is, when a logical dimension was the same as a physical
   dimension.  Umm, yeah.  Well, anyway, it's gone now.  Thanks to Max Kull
   for finding this problem and helping me eliminate it.

   In BasWiz 1.5, a BASOBJ.ZIP file was included which contained all of the
   object files for BasWiz.  This has been replaced with BASWIZ.LIB.  Use the
   utilities included with LIBWIZ (separate) to extract all of the .OBJ files
   from the library to allow you to create your own custom libraries.



BASWIZ 1.5, 04/01/91:

   This library is now too large for BASIC to cope with as a unit.  Look for
   LIBWIZxx.ZIP (separate), a library manager which will allow you to create
   custom libraries containing just the routines you need.

   WARNING: Using certain BasWiz routines in the QuickBASIC environment may
   cause your computer to lock up!  This is due to a bug in QB's SETMEM
   function and does not affect programs compiled by BC.  Affected routines
   are: file handling, virtual window, telecommunications, memory allocation,
   far string, and Epson printer graphics (GN2xxx) routines.

   Since my GRAFWIZ and MATHWIZ libraries have attracted relatively few
   registrations, I've merged them with BasWiz.

   The WInput routine has been modified so that a "backspace" or "delete
   character" affects just the input field, not an entire line.

   Several bugs in the expression evaluator were fixed.  The left-to-right
   precedence of subtraction now works properly.  Negation is now handled
   with more aplomb.  The expression evaluator is no longer sensitive to
   spaces and will accept "**" as a substitute for "^".  A demo, CALC.BAS,
   has been added.  Note: QuickBASIC and BASCOM have the same bug in its
   expression evaluator that Evaluate used to have, i.e., evaluating powers
   before negation (for instance, -2^2 would be reported as -4 instead of 4)!

   A bug in the ScreenSize routine was fixed.  It will now return a reliable
   row count for MDA, HGA and CGA displays as well as more recent adapters.

   The source for PrintScreen somehow got corrupted and I don't have any
   valid backup copies.  It has been removed until I can rewrite the routine.

   The Hercules graphics routines have been altered.

   Assorted additions have been made to the virtual windowing system:
   -- Pop-up menus with auto up/down scrolling (up to 255 choices per menu)
   -- Shadowed windows, with a choice of solid and transparent shadows
   -- Hidden windows (makes a window disappear or reappear)
   -- Control over automatic scrolling at the end of a virtual screen

   For BASIC single and double precision numbers, the following routines have
   been added: inverse hyperbolic cosine, inverse hyperbolic sine, inverse
   hyperbolic tangent.

   The integer or fractional parts of BCD numbers can now be extracted with
   the BCDInt$ and BCDFrac$ functions.

   Support for EGA monochrome graphics (SCREEN 10) has been added.

   The Epson graphics routines now support three fonts via GN2GetFont% and
   GN2Font.  The latter MUST BE USED to initialize the font before using
   GN2Write or GN2WriteLn.

   The G#Banner routines now support extended ASCII characters, i.e.,
   CHR$(128) - CHR$(255).



BASWIZ 1.4, 10/10/90:

   The DEMO.EXE file is no longer included, to keep the archive size down.
   Use CREATE.BAT to create it from the DEMO.BAS and BASWIZ.LIB files.

   A bug in TERM.BAS was fixed.  The problem, an inconsistency in the
   StartXmodemSend calling sequence, was also fixed in the docs.  The
   displays in TERM.BAS have been cleaned up.

   The virtual windowing system refused to display a cursor on some MDA and
   CGA systems, evidently since they don't maintain a certain status value.
   The fix unfortunately requires hard-wiring of the necessary value if an
   MDA or CGA is detected.  It may produce a strange cursor on those CGAs
   which have a special hi-res text mode (except for Compaqs, which I made
   allowances for).  If this happens to you, please notify me.

   The virtual windowing system can now automatically convert your colors so
   that they will show up properly on a monochrome display.  It also supports
   flicker suppression for those CGAs on which this is a problem.

   A routine that handles IBM ANSI codes using virtual windows has been
   added.  Processing of "ANSI" music is optional.

   Memory management and pointers are now supported.

   The numeric expression evaluator now supports parentheses for overriding
   the default (algebraic) order of evaluation.

   A stub file has been added to allow use of Crescent's PDQ library.



BASWIZ 1.3, 08/13/90:

   The far string handler now supports use of expanded memory (EMS) as well
   as conventional system memory.



BASWIZ 1.2, 07/08/90:

   A bug in WDelChr was fixed.

   An input routine was added to the virtual windowing system.

   The telecommunications routines were expanded to include the Xmodem file
   transfer protocol.  This includes automatic support for all current
   variants on the protocol: checksum and CRC error detection, 128-byte and
   1024-byte packets.  Only uploading ("send file") is currently supported.



BASWIZ 1.1, 05/26/90:

   The virtual windowing system was expanded to include user-defined frame
   types.  A bug which prevented use of MDA and Hercules displays was fixed.

   A bug in the telecomm routines which prevented use of other than COM1 was
   fixed.

   A comprehensive collection of file handling routines was added.



BASWIZ 1.0, 04/15/90:

   This was the initial release of The BASIC Wizard's Library, featuring
   virtual windows, Hercules graphics, far strings, telecommunications
   support and a numeric expression evaluator.