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- ╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
- ║ Lesson 1 Part 9.0 F-PC 3.5 Tutorial by Jack Brown ║
- ╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
- ┌──────────────────────┐
- │ The Banner Program │
- └──────────────────────┘
- Welcome back to the F-PC Tutorial. Did anyone investigate the
- possibility of constructing a block letter alphabet? It turns out that
- the demo program in the file BANNER.SEQ may provide some ideas to help
- get you started in this direction. In this part of lesson 1 we are
- going to work with the BANNER program. We are not going to explain how
- it works at this time. What we need is a larger file to work with so
- that we can explore some of the techniques for browsing and navigating
- through *.SEQ files.
-
- The file BANNER.SEQ is placed in the C:\FPC directory by the FPC
- INSTALL program. You should move a copy of BANNER.SEQ to your WORK
- directory.
-
- Let's start F-PC and open the file BANNER.SEQ . There are at least two
- ways to do this. From the FPC sub directory you can put the file name on
- the command as shown below.
-
- C:\FPC>F BANNER.SEQ <enter> <--- filename on dos command line opened.
-
- Or from the root directory using your F.BAT file just type.
-
- C:\>F <enter> <--- Start F-PC
- ok <--- at the ok prompt
- OPEN BANNER.SEQ <enter> <--- open the file BANNER.SEQ
-
- ( or use <ALT> O and choose BANNER.SEQ from the menu... )
- ( or use <ESC> and the "Open file" item in the FILE menu )
-
- one of the last three ways is the most useful if you already have Forth
- running. The first way is best if you happen to be in DOS. There is one
- other difference between the above two methods of opening files. When a
- file is opened by specifying its name on the DOS command line it is
- known as the DEFAULT file. You can ONLY specify the DEFAULT file when
- starting F-PC from the DOS command line. Why are we capitalizing
- DEFAULT? You may have noticed that using HELP and VIEW change the name
- of the currently open file. If you want to move back to the file that
- was open before the last HELP or VIEW you must open it again. However
- if you opened your working file by specifying it on the DOS command line
- it is called the DEFAULT file and you can always reopen the DEFAULT file
- by:
-
- DEFAULT <enter> <--- You guessed it!
-
- ***** Handy TIP ****
- F-PC is smart enough to know that if a file extension is not specified
- then it should look for one with the .SEQ extension anyway! You could
- have typed: F BANNER <enter> or OPEN BANNER <enter> and obtained the
- same results.
- ┌────────────────────────┐
- │ Browsing an Open File. │
- └────────────────────────┘
- It is possible to view or look at the contents of an open file without
- using the having to worry about modifying the file. To do this type
-
- BROWSE <enter> or B <enter>
-
- Browse the BANNER.SEQ file... Use PgUp PgDn etc to move around the
- file.
-
- This time we are going to RUN the BANNER program. Start F-PC with
- BANNER.SEQ as the default file. Do you know how to do this? There is
- only one way. The default file must be specified on the DOS command
- line when you start F-PC.
-
- C:\FPC> F BANNER <enter> <--- Extension not necessary!
- ┌───────────────────────────────┐
- │ Loading or Compiling a File │
- └───────────────────────────────┘
- To load or compile the source code of the currently open file we use the
- LOAD command. The LOAD command takes one numeric parameter
- specifying the line of open file where the LOADing should start.
-
- <n> LOAD <enter> <--- Compile or load source code starting at
- line <n> .
- So... if we want to load the whole BANNER program, and the BANNER file
- is currently open then we can just type:
-
- 1 LOAD <enter> <--- Load all of the currently open file.
-
- Do this now. The BANNER program includes a DEMO and when it is LOADed
- the DEMO will execute displaying a welcome message in large block
- letters. F-PC also includes a shorter way of loading the currently open
- file. It is the command OK
-
- OK <enter> <--- Load all of the currently open file (same as 1 LOAD)
- <--- We don't like this name but it is short!
- ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
- │ Please move to Lesson 1 Part 10.0 │
- └─────────────────────────────────────┘
-