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- Readme/Help File
- VIEW v1.0 by Jeff Johnston
- Colored Text Format File Viewer
-
- View is a utility that allows you to make colorful help, readme,
- or other text-based files that are distributed in shareware/freeware
- programs. Using extended characters in the standard ASCII character set,
- you can make your text files more readable and interesting WITHOUT having
- to use ANSI.SYS. With this version of View (1.0), you can change text fore-
- ground & background colors, pause and wait for a keypress, clear the screen,
- and make characters blink.
-
- To create a CTF file, simply create a pure ASCII file, and add the
- following control characters to alter display:
-
- ASCII
- Code Character Action
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
- 012 - clears the screen.
-
- 240 ≡[number] - changes text color. Use the table below to find the color
- you want. For example, blue text is ≡01.
-
- 236 ∞[number] - changes text background color. Use the table below to
- find the color you want. ∞01 means blue background.
-
- 019 - pauses and waits for a keypress. Useful with in pausing
- before clearing the sceen and showing a new one.
-
- 233 Θ - make text blink. NOTE: only works if you have changed the
- text color before. If this control character is reached before
- a text-color change character, your characters will not show
- up on the screen. To blink blue characters, use: ≡01Θ
-
-
- To create these characters, hold down ALT and press the character's
- ASCII code on the number pad. Most word-processing programs and editors
- accept this way of input. If you have MS-DOS 5.0+, I recommend using
- EDIT.COM.
-
- NOTE: All control characters and their required values WILL NOT
- PRINT TO THE SCREEN. If you have a CTF file that has this:
-
- ≡1 Hello!
-
- It will output like this: (In BLUE)
-
- Hello!
-
- Be careful how you line up tabs and spaces!
-
- Included is a sample CTF file. Refer to it if you can't figure some-
- thing out.
-
- After you have made a CTF file, you can view it by typing:
-
- VIEW [filename]
-
- You must include the extension .CTF. Also, VIEW does not stop after
- each page. It will only stop when it reaches the pause character()
-
- I recommend creating a batch file for each document. For example,
- a README.CTF could be read using README.BAT, which contains:
-
- @ECHO OFF
- VIEW README.CTF
-
- This limits confusion if someone saw README.CTF and typed:
-
- TYPE README.CTF
-
- The Turbo C++ source code to VIEW.EXE is available to anyone who
- donates $3.00 or more. They will receive, on a 3.5inch High Denisity disk,
- all my current shareware and freeware programs. VIEW is freeware, so you
- may distribute it with any programs you make, if you want colorful CTF files
- that don't require the readers to have ANSI.SYS loaded.
-
- Comments & Suggestions:
-
- Terranstar@aol.com - Internet
- TerranStar - America Online
-
- Here is the list of colors:
-
- Color - # ---- Forgrnd? Backgrnd?
-
- BLACK 00 Yes Yes
- BLUE 01 Yes Yes
- GREEN 02 Yes Yes
- CYAN 03 Yes Yes
- RED 04 Yes Yes
- MAGENTA 05 Yes Yes
- BROWN 06 Yes Yes
- LIGHT GRAY 07 Yes Yes
- DARK GRAY 08 Yes No
- LIGHT BLUE 09 Yes No
- LIGHT GREEN 10 Yes No
- LIGHT CYAN 11 Yes No
- LIGHT RED 12 Yes No
- LIGHT MAGENTA 13 Yes No
- YELLOW 14 Yes No
- WHITE 15 Yes No
-
-