Belgian Amiga Club - ADF Collection

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TribeText Designer by Mr. Bit of TRIBE..... Index ----- Introduction - 1 What to do - 2 The designer - 3 What to do next - 4 Quick start/useful info. - 5 Bugs? and stuff - 6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction --------------- What you've got...... Tribe Text Designer (TTD) is a specially written editor for the forthcoming Tribe Text Demo/Disk Magazine. It allows you to design screens using basic graphics (not unlike the keyboard graphics available on the C64) in any foreground/background combination of 16 "colours" (there are 8 basic colours, including black, a hidden colour which only appears when activated, and 7 flashing colours). The demo is based on the British Teletext system, where pages of information (news, sport, share prices etc.) are broadcast digitally between normal television pictures and selected via a remote control unit. What We Want From You...... We want articles, interviews, tips, jokes, piccies (in TTD format) and anything else you can come up with. An introduction to yourself would be nice, not your whole life story, but a brief outline of your group position, where you're located etc. Another interesting possibility is the potential for quizzes, using the hidden colour feature (See below). We will accept contributions from everybody, not just TRIBE members but we do NOT want articles slagging off other groups - slagging on the whole is self-destructive, so who needs it?? Constructive & well balanced critisism will be allowed - we leave it up to you to decide where critisism ends and slagging begins. BBS/Group adverts will be accepted, but try to get them to look as good as possible. We'd appreciate you making any screens you do as attractive as possible, via the use of logos, colour etc. Now it's up to you... we've put a lot of hard work into this, but it'll all be a waste of time without your efforts. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. What to do ------------- All articles to be included MUST be created with the designer. Design all your pages with the designer. If you use more than one page for an article (use as many as you need, within reason) please enclose a DOC file which gives the order, or use filenames which make it obvious what order they should go in (but a DOC file would be nice!!!) Of course, let us know who you are either in the doc or in the page itself. DON'T do pages full of greets, 'cos they won't be used. When you've completed a series of pages, archive them with LZ or similar. Try to keep separate articles in separate archives. Upload them onto ANY TRIBE board, in the TRIBE area, with a descriptor which makes it obvious that it's for inclusion into the mag. If you don't have access to the TRIBE area, upload it into the REQUESTED area and MAIL the SYSOP so he can move it. If your are not modem-active, there is an address below which you can send them to. Articles will NOT be censored in any way - but YOU are responsible for what you write. If anybody disagrees with any article, they should write a sensible reply which will be included in the next issue. This does NOT mean that we want loads of slagging. All articles should be in English (or American, hehe!!) but if you're unhappy with your spelling, let us know and we'll run it through a checker. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Designer --------------- The designer is supplied on a bootable floppy, but can be run from a harddisk via Workbench or CLI. Please note that you MUST have 80 column mode set in preferences to run it correctly, the library HISOFTBASIC.LIBRARY must exist in the bootdisks LIBS directory. Screen files can only be saved or loaded to/from the current drive & directory, so it's a good idea to put it in a seperate directory if you want to use it from a hard disk. Screen Layout ------------- When the screen appears, you will see the page area at the top and the status area beneath. The status area shows the current cursor position in X/Y co-ordinates, the current foreground and background colours, an example of text in the current foreground and background colours, the currently selected graphic character, and the current write mode. Main Controls ------------- F1/F2 - Change the current foreground colour (text colour) down or up respectively. F3/F4 - Change the current background colour down or up respectively. F5/F6 - Change the current selected graphic character down or up respectively. F7 - Toggles hidden colour on/off. F8 - Saves screen. Filename is limited to a maximum of eight characters. Files can only be saved into the current directory. You will NOT be prevented from overwriting existing files. F9 - Loads screen. Filename is limited to a maximum of eight characters. Files can only be loaded from the current directory. You will be asked to confirm loading as any screen in memory will be overwritten. F10 - Fills screen with a selected colour/character combination. Once selected you will be asked if you are sure you want to continue as filling will modify the current screen. Next you will be asked to set the fill colours and write mode (See DEL key), and then to press the character to fill with. Pressing RETURN will abort this operation. HELP - Sets the current graphics character. When pressed the current graphics character will be drawn, and the cursor moved to the right. DEL - Toggles Write Mode:- If the Write mode is set to CHAR. AND COLOUR then typing will produce the appropriate character using the current colour settings. This is the normal mode for typing/drawing. If the Write mode is set to CHARACTER ONLY then typing will produce the appropriate character using that screen positions existing colours. This mode is useful for changing the text in an area of screen without having to change the colours. If the Write mode is set to FOREGROUND ONLY then typing will change the foreground colour of the character in that position only WITHOUT changing either the background colour or the character itself. BACKGROUND ONLY does the same thing, but with the background colour. COLOUR ONLY changes both colours WITHOUT changing the character. These modes are useful for changing the colour of an area of screen without having to change the text. The Write mode also affects the FILL operation, allowing the changing of the colours of the whole screen without having to overwrite the text. BKSPC - Deletes the character beneath the cursor and moves the cursor one position to the left. CTRL L- Compresses and saves page in the magazines final format. This mode SHOULD not be used. Files saved in this format cannot be reloaded and it is intended for the Editors use only, in case we have to change the final format. CTRL N- Clears the screen - WARNING - any page in memory will be lost. CTRL Q- Quit designer and exit to CLI/Workbench. You will be given the option to save the current screen before exit. Movement Controls ----------------- The cursor is moved via the arrow keys. Pressing CTRL + T, V, F or G moves the cursor five positions Up, Down, Left or Right respectively. Moving off the edges of the screen will move the cursor to the opposite side. Typing using the Alpha/Numeric, punctuation or graphic keys will move the cursor to the right. Typing off the edge of the screen will move the cursor down a line and back to the beginning. Pressing return will move the cursor down a line and back to the beginning. Options can also be selected and help pages displayed by using the pull-down menus. Colours ------- There are sixteen "colours" which are as follows:- 0 - Black 8 - Hidden (See below) 1 - White 9 - Flashing White 2 - Red 10 - Flashing Red 3 - Green 11 - Flashign Green 4 - Blue 12 - Flashing Blue 5 - Purple 13 - Flashing Purple 6 - Cyan 14 - Flashing Cyan 7 - Yellow 15 - Flashing Yellow These colours can be used in any combination of Foreground/Background but care should be taken when choosing combinations as some can be difficult to read. Also, you should note that flashing colours always flash to black, regardless of their background colour. The hidden colour can be used to hide text. In the magazine this text will not appear unless the key assigned to REVEAL is pressed. One use for this is in a quiz, where a question could be displayed with the answer beneath it in the hidden colour. The user will not see the answer until he presses the reveal key. Jokes could also be done in this way, with the punchlines displayed in the hidden colour. Use the Hidden colour toggle (F7) to view the screen as it will appear in the mag. Graphics Characters ------------------- There are 36 graphics characters which can be used to draw logos, piccies etc. Any combination of colours can be used for graphics. With imagination and patience really good results can be achieved. Examples -------- Nine very basic example screens are included. Load "BIT1" to view them... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. What to do next. ------------------- Type a quick DOC file using any old editor which gives a basic outline of the article and the order of the pages. Then stick the whole lot in an archive using your favorite archiving proggy and upload it to a TRIBE BBS. Place them in the TRIBE area, or if you don't have access, in the REQUESTED warez area and MAIL the SYSOP to ask him to move it. Also, please MAIL me (Mr. Bit) so I know to download them. Or if your not modem-active, send your files to the following address:- Mr. D. Tyler 1 Timber Street Elland West Yorkshire England HX5 0EA (Incase anyone thinks giving my address is a bit DUMB, this is a mail re-direction address, but packages will get to me eventually.) Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope and we will return your disk with a copy of the magazine on it. Keep the designer safe because it'll be used for future editions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Quick start/useful info. --------------------------- The Designer is very easy to use, so if you want to just dive in then feel free but here are a few things to bear in mind:- 1. Pay close attention to the Write mode, this allows you to change the colour of text without overwriting, the text without changing the colour, or both. I'm pointing this out 'cos it can be very confusing if you're in colour only mode, typing away and nothing is happening. If you find yourself in this position, that's the one to check. 2. Text typed in the hidden colour will only show up if the hidden colour is turned on. 3. The Fill screen function is used to fill the screen (heh! heh!) with a particular colour or character or both. You can change the colour of a screen of text without overwriting the text itself by setting the Write mode to colour only. 4. CTRL T,V,F & G move the cursor to every fifth position. This allows rapid movement around the screen. 5. A flashing status message in the bottom left corner lets you know exactly whats going on. 6. When saving and loading, the Write mode function has no effect. That is, screens are always saved and loaded in full, colours, text and all. 7. Screen filenames end in .TTD 8. If you're worried by the size of the files (approx. 2.5k), don't be 'cos they'll be compressed in the mag. The COMPRESS option (CTRL + L) saves files in this format, but please don't save files this way, 'cos you can't load them back in and we'd rather recieve files in standard format in case we have to make any last minute changes to the mag. itself. 9. Drawing in a flashing colour can be quite awkward, so in many cases it's easier to draw in a normal colour and use the COLOUR or FOREGROUND/BACKGROUND ONLY mode (DEL key) to change to the drawing to the flashing colour. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Bugs? and stuff ------------------ What bugs??? Seriously though..... if you have any trouble with the designer let me know via the BBS you got it from and I'll put it right..... Cheers 2:- Afrika 4 coding the magazine itself. G.I. Joe 4 bug reports/testing + aesthetic advice. GROO 4 compatibility testing. Risk 4 showing "what our editor should look like" - FUCK DAT SHIT (hehehe) All TRIBE members just 4 being COOL!!! Why is it that as soon as I do something new, somebody else does exactly the same thing!!! PISS ME OFF!!! :^) Anybody dissin us (me) 'cos it's in BASIC - EAT IT!!! It works, it ain't THAT sloooow and I'm proud of it.... So there!!! Cheers - ya'll b cool now, y'hear??? C yuh.....