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Internet Message Format  |  2009-12-11  |  10KB
  1. From: "Arobase, Salle multimΘdia" <salle.arob...@wanadoo.fr>
  2. Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm
  3. Subject: Better font for CP/M-86 Plus
  4. Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 14:01:11 +0200
  5. Organization: Wanadoo, l'internet avec France Telecom
  6. Lines: 179
  7. Message-ID: <b6ej8h$c21$1@news-reader12.wanadoo.fr>
  8. Reply-To: "Arobase, Salle multimΘdia" <salle.arob...@wanadoo.fr>
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  12. NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 Apr 2003 11:58:09 GMT
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  17.  
  18. QXFONT.TXT
  19. ----------
  20.  
  21. I am very pleased today to give you  an utility  that, I  think,
  22. will be very useful to everybody still playing  with CP/M  on an
  23. IBM Clown.
  24.  
  25. The first thing that  I noticed  2 years  ago, was  that CP/M-86
  26. Plus  was  displaying "double  column" (or  bold) characters  on
  27. screen. It was striking for me, since the Epson QX-10 that I had
  28. used during  the last  15 years  had beautiful,  "single column"
  29. characters that had never tired my eyes.
  30.  
  31. On the IBM Clown, however, I was having headaches after a fairly
  32. normal duration  of use  of the  screen. Clearly,  those awfully
  33. badly designed characters were the culprit,  and maybe  also the
  34. fact that the Epson QX-10 has a "Black and Green"  screen, while
  35. my TANDON 286 12-MHz  has a  "color VGA"  screen. I  have always
  36. thinked that color screens were not suitable for serious work.
  37.  
  38. Unfortunately,  monochrome  screens  are  now  a  rarity on  IBM
  39. Clowns, so we are ogliged to use color screens. The  first thing
  40. to do is then to select green chars on black background.
  41.  
  42. Recently, I suffered from  a flu  epidemic. 5  days later,  when
  43. starting to recover, I reviewed what was on the hard disk of the
  44. MS-DOS  portable  that  I  use  to  type  my  messages  to   the
  45. comp.os.cpm Newsgroup.
  46.  
  47. Among  various  mixed things,  I found  one ISOFONT.CMD  by Kirk
  48. Lawrence. What it was doing striked a chord inside me, so I went
  49. to find an old paper file where I had dumped the ROM font of the
  50. Epson QX-10. Thank God, I found it easily.
  51.  
  52. Now, the problem was to recreate a source code, with pages after
  53. pages  of  DB  defining  each  line  of rows  of pixels  of each
  54. characters. I had no idea where was the  original BASIC  program
  55. that I had used 15 years ago.  So,  the "simplest"  solution was
  56. to recreate it... (It is amazing the number of time  I re-invent
  57. some wheels!)
  58.  
  59. This  time,  seeing  what  I  had  at  my  disposal,  I  took my
  60. DUMPFILE.BAS program and, instead of displaying the 16  bytes on
  61. a line, I modified it to display the pixels on  16 lines,  first
  62. in  normal  binary  for  the  HEX  value,  then  in what  I call
  63. "symbolic binary" (where "." stands for "0", and "O" stands  for
  64. "1". This makes the shape of characters stands out from the maze
  65. of binary digits.). For example:
  66.  
  67. ;
  68. ;-------------------------------- 21h = !
  69. ;
  70.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  71.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O...
  72.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  73.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  74.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  75.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  76.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  77.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  78.         DB      00000000b       ; ........
  79.         DB      00000000b       ; ........
  80.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  81.         DB      00010000b       ; ...O....
  82.         DB      00000000b       ; ........
  83.         DB      00000000b       ; ........
  84.         DB      00000000b       ; ........
  85.         DB      00000000b       ; ........
  86.  
  87. After recreating the source code of the font of ISOFONT,  I took
  88. my  editor,  zeroed  the  above fields,  then spent  one morning
  89. entering the binary and symbolic binary corresponding to the ROM
  90. font used by the Epson QX-10 in "hardware mode". (There  is also
  91. a "software mode" where you can change the font at  will, thanks
  92. to the power of the NEC uPD 7220 GDC.)
  93.  
  94. Finally, I disassembled the snippet of code. It was very easy to
  95. understand with the "System BIOS" book  of Phoenix  Technologies
  96. Ltd. Kirk Lawrence had written a  real nice  and small  piece of
  97. code.
  98.  
  99. I added a STARTUP.SUB file on my CP/M-86  Plus system,  so that,
  100. from now on, it  will automatically  change the  screen font  on
  101. cold boot. (The only thing missing from a real 8-bit system is a
  102. RAMdisk,  especially  since  so  many IBM  Clowns only  have one
  103. single floppy disk drive. But I  am in  the process  of building
  104. one dream system.)
  105.  
  106. Since then, I like so much this font,  that I  have added  it in
  107. the  AUTOEXEC.BAT  file of  the MS-DOS  portable that  I use  to
  108. prepare my messages.
  109.  
  110. I don't know how is your  eyesight, but  mine is  getting older,
  111. and it is nice to be able to use such an old, proven, font  with
  112. faster hardware. I highly recommend it.
  113.  
  114.  
  115. Yours Sincerely,
  116. "French Luser"
  117.  
  118.  
  119. -------- Begin QXFONT.H86 -------
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  188. :16078A8210106000000060920C0000000000000000000000000059
  189. :00000001FF
  190. -------- End   QXFONT.H86 -------
  191.  
  192.  
  193. EOF
  194.