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Page [1] Programmer's Aid Version 1.2 Copyright (c) 1986 by TurboWare and J. P. Richmond, Jr. All Rights Reserved Commercial Usage Without A Site License Agreement is Forbidden TurboWare P.O. Box 9476 South Charleston, West Virginia 25309 Page [2] OVERVIEW Programmer's Aid is a memory resident utility that allows you to instantly call up the ASCII character set for review. This is particularly useful when you are working with an editor on a program or text file that may need to display ASCII graphics characters. If your editor allows you to enter the characters using the ALT key plus the corresponding sequence of numbers on the numeric keypad you will find Programmer's Aid very helpful. Programmer's Aid allows you to specify the "hot" key (the key that invokes the program ). It also detects the video adapter board type and responds accordingly in black and white for the monochrome adapter and in color for the color graphics adapter. If you are using a monochrome monitor with a color graphics adapter card there is a startup switch available to force Programmer's Aid into the black and white mode. Since there are 256 ASCII characters in the PC, Programmer's Aid provides two pages of display thus allowing you to see the entire set of characters in only two windows. The program will also check the color graphics adapter card to see if it is in a mode that is incompatible with the program's 80 x 25 screen mode. If this occurs a short warning beep will sound but Programmer's Aid will not disturb the screen. In text mode Programmer's Aid will preserve the screen's contents at the time it is invoked and leave the screen restored as it was when it exits. Programmer's Aid is available on a site license basis and details follow in this documentation. Page [3] SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Programmer's Aid requires an IBM PC/XT/AT/PCjr or very close compatible with a minimum of 256K. Programmer's Aid occupies approximately 32k bytes of Ram memory when resident. On systems with 384k and up this will hardly be noticed. On smaller systems it may limit the size of applications you can run. PCjr's need at least 256k although you may wish to experiment if you have 128k. STARTUP To startup Programmer's Aid just simply type in the following at the Dos prompt: PGMAID (press the enter key) <PCjr owners use the /JR option; see page 4> PgmAid will automatically check the video adapter card and adjust its output to match the current state of the video adapter card. This means that if you have a color graphics adapter card and you are in color mode, PgmAid will display in color. If you are in monochrome mode however, it will display in black and white. A slight problem may be encountered here with systems employing a color graphics adapter card and a monochrome monitor. The colors that PgmAid uses (even on a monochrome monitor) should be acceptable but if not, to improve on the readability of the screens; startup PgmAid with the /BW switch as follows: PGMAID /BW (press the enter key) This will invoke PgmAid in a default black and white mode and it will remain so until you reload it again. Note: PgmAid can only be started up once after each reboot of your system. This is due to the fact that when the program becomes resident in memory it has no way to free up its memory and reload at a later time. (Since you might load other memory resident tasks after PgmAid, if it were to release this memory chaos would result!) Therefore if you invoke the program with the wrong set of startup options, it will be necessary for you to reboot your system before you can install it once again. No harm will come to your system however if you forget and try to reload PgmAid again. You will just receive a polite message telling you that it is already there. Page [4] OPTIONS PgmAid has several "switches" available to the user. These switches are actually arguments specified in the command line at startup time. The case of the text specifing the switch does not matter; upper or lower case is accepted equally well. Spelling of the switch names is critical however. Switches may be placed after the program name in any order. You do /BW not have to specify all the switches. We have already mentioned one of them; the /BW switch. As mentioned earlier, color is the default mode when the color adapter card is present and use of the /BW switch tells PgmAid to force black and white mode. Four other switches are available as well. They are: /BLINK /JR /KEY= /X /BLINK The /BLINK switch is for those users who prefer that the message explaining how to exit PgmAid be a blinking message. Since some users find this to be objectionable the default option is for non-blinking messages with the option to override this. /X The /X switch provides the user with an exploding window similar to those found in some other computer systems. Like the /BLINK switch this is purely a matter of aesthetics. Try it, you may like it. Junior users, since your machine runs slower than a PC you may find this feature to be too slow for your liking. If enough PCjr owners register and ask for it I will custom speed up this feature for the Junior. /JR The /JR switch tells PgmAid that you are running it on a PCjr. If you get the message: "NO FREE USER INTERRUPTS AVAILABLE" It may be because you are running PgmAid on a PCjr without the /JR switch or you are trying to run it on a PC or compatible WITH the /JR switch. The third reason this message may appear is that some other piece(s) of software has tied up the user interrupts and none are free. See the further discussion of this under MISC on page 7. Page [5] OPTIONS (Cont'd.) /KEY The /KEY switch is one of the most useful switches. It allows you to change the key stroke sequence used to invoke PgmAid. As supplied to you, PgmAid's default key stroke sequence is Alt 9 (NOT the 9 on the numeric keypad). To execute PgmAid, load it into memory as indicated earlier with whatever switches you may deem necessary. For example to load PgmAid in black and white mode with an exploding window the Dos command line would read: PGMAID /BW /X (press the enter key) After this is done, hold down the Alternate key <ALT> and depress the 9 key at the top of the keyboard. The opening logo screen for PgmAid will appear. To continue on press the letter C as indicated on the screen. Note: this notice will only appear the first time after you have loaded PgmAid. (If you decide to become a registered user of PgmAid I will send you a switch that will bypass this screen. This is handy for installing PgmAid in your Autoexec.Bat file.) If you choose to change the keystroke sequence you may do so by use of the /KEY= switch. For example let's say that I choose to use the HOME key to pop PgmAid up and down (not a particularly good choice but ok for an example). The keyboard scan code for the HOME key is 71 (decimal). The format of the /KEY switch is: /KEY=xxx ( where xxx is the scan code of the desired key stroke in DECIMAL) So in the case of my example I would enter at the Dos prompt: PGMAID /KEY=71 (press the enter key) At this point you will get a message indicating that PgmAid may be invoked with the selected key stroke sequence. In other words pressing HOME now causes PgmAid to pop up on the screen and exit as well. Please note that this version of PgmAid works with keyboard scan codes and extended keyboard scan codes. Alt 9 is an extended keyboard scan code of 128 decimal. It is very important that you specify the scan code in DECIMAL as PgmAid does not understand Hexadecimal yet. Page [6] SPECIAL SYMBOLS The following special codes are displayed in place of characters that do not show up on the video monitor: NUL = The null character BEL = The code to ring the bell BS = Back space TAB = Tabulator LF = Line feed HM = Home FF = Form feed CR = Carriage return ESC = Escape RT = Right LF = Left UP = Up DW = Down Page [7] MISC. PgmAid detects the current mode of the color graphics adapter and if it is in a graphics or 40 column mode it will give you a short warning beep each time you attempt to invoke it. Sorry, but there just isn't enough room in 40 column mode to show all the codes on two pages. Also, if PgmAid popped up in the middle of your graphics screen it would wipe out the screen contents. This may be solved in a future edition of PgmAid. There are no known bugs in PgmAid. If you find one please write to TurboWare and describe the bug with as much detailed information as possible such as: Type of system you are using How much memory you have Type of video adapter card and monitor you are using What program you were "in" when you popped up PgmAid Any program counter "PC=" dumps that may have appeared Any other memory resident programs (TSR's) you may have loaded concurrent with PgmAid. Another factor you should be aware of is that PgmAid uses the User Bios Communication Area address 0000:04FC through 0000:04FF. Most programs do not use this area. If however you get the message that PgmAid could not load and it is the first time you have attempted to load it, then it is likely that these bytes in memory are already in use by another application. The message looks like this: BIOS USER COMMUNICATIONS AREA IN USE BY ANOTHER PROGRAM One way to locate the offending program is to load your programs one at a time attempting to load PgmAid after each one until PgmAid will no longer load. Of course you have to reboot after each attempt so this is quite a lengthy process. A shotgun approach of eliminating 3 or 4 programs at a time may be more useful and a lot quicker. Also, if you are adept at using Debug, the easiest way to detect when these bytes come into use is to just <D>ump them out using debug. The Bios User Communications Area bytes are at 0000:04FC through 0000:04FF and the User interrupts are interrupts hex 60 through hex 67 (Memory locations 0000:0180 through 0000:019F. Some of the memory resident scheme will be modified in the next release of PgmAid and this will cease to be a problem. Page [8] WARRANTY Programmer's Aid, herein referred to as PGMAID, is supplied on an "AS IS" basis with no warranties express or implied including any warranties of MERCHANTABILITY, and fitness for the purpose intended. In no event will the author or TurboWare be liable to the user of PGMAID for any damages, including any loss of profits either real or anticipatory, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use of this program or inability of use of same, or for any claim by another party. TurboWare P.O. Box 9476 South Charleston, West Virginia 25309 Page [9] THE USER-SUPPORTED SOFTWARE CONCEPT Programmer's Aid is distributed on a User-Supported Software basis and you are encouraged to copy and share this program with your friends. If you find this program to be of benefit to you please consider becoming a registered user of PgmAid by sending your $10. contribution to : TurboWare P.O. Box 9476 South Charleston, West Virginia 25309 This will entitle you to free notification of other TurboWare products as they become available as well as notification of additional upgraded versions of Programmer's Aid. CORPORATE USERS This program is not available for commercial usage without first site licensing the program. The price of the program is cheap when compared to commercial software of equivalent quality and discounts are allowed for multiple copies at a single company site. Write for details. THE FUTURE Ninety percent of what lies ahead is already in your hands when you have a copy of PgmAid. The resident engine of the program can be used for a variety of resident Help utilities. A customizable form that can work with Ascii files straight off the disk is in the works. It will allow you to design your own popup forms and help guides. Write to TurboWare with any suggestions you may have for improvements and modifications. NOTE: PgmAid is written entirely in "Turbo Pascal". "Turbo Pascal" is a product of Borland International of Scotts Valley, California. TurboWare is not affiliated with Borland International and the products of TurboWare are not connected with Borland International nor any of their agencies. IBM PC/XT/AT/PCjr are products of International Business Machines Corporation of Boca Raton, Florida. Page [10] Programmer's Aid 1.2 Registration/Invoice Form #060853 Date:_______________ Name: ___________________________________ Company: ________________________________ Mail Stop: ______________________________ Address: ________________________________ City: __________________________________ State: ____________ Zip: ______________ Quantity Program Description Price each Total -------- ------------------- ---------- ------ 1 Programmer's Aid $10.00 $10.00 Please forward payment and make check payable to: TurboWare P.O. Box 9476 So. Charleston, WV 25309 NEW FEATURES OF VERSION 1.1 Several modifications have been made to the original version 1.0 of PgmAid and the revised version is known as 1.1 Several users have indicated that they find the fact that PgmAid always pops up on Page 1 (and in hexadecimal) each time you invoke it to be objectionable. Therefore version 1.1 now pops up on whatever page you left it on when you popped it off. In addition if you were viewing the Ascii codes in decimal when you popped it off, it will continue to display the codes in decimal when you pop it back up again. The same is true if you are using it in hex mode. Therefore it is no longer necessary to always change pages and Ascii code display base when you pop up PgmAid. Three new switches have been added to accommodate users with color monitors who may prefer to select their own colors. /FG= The /FG switch is used to set the ForeGround text color. /BG= The /BG switch is used to set the BackGround text color. /BD= The /BD switch is used to select the border color of the box. /DC= The /DC switch is used to select the color of the decimal presentations of the Ascii codes. /HX= The /HX switch is used to select the color of the hexadecimal presentations of the Ascii codes. If these switches are omitted the default colors will be used if appropriate. If however, you specify one or more of these switches, the color you select will act as an override of the default colors. Some color combinations may be quite difficult to read. To use these switches specify them in the command line as follows: Example: /FG=3 /HX=9 In this example the foreground text color will be set to Cyan and the Hexadecimal numbers will be displayed in light blue. Here is a table of the colors and their associated numbers: Number Color ------ ----- 000 Black 001 Blue 002 Green 003 Cyan 004 Red 005 Magenta 006 Brown (yellow on some monitors) 007 Light Gray 008 Dark Gray 009 Light Blue 010 Light Green 011 Light Cyan 012 Light Red 013 Light Magenta 014 Bright Yellow 015 White NEW FEATURES OF VERSION 1.2 Version 1.2 has a few minor bugs fixed in it that may have caused problems to users of Version 1.1 and earlier versions of PgmAid. In addition, several users are now using TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) control programs to release TSR programs such as PgmAid from memory. As mentioned earlier PgmAid was never designed to deallocate its memory once it had been loaded. The reason for this lies in the fact that if the user is not careful to preserve the order in which TSR's are loaded and unloaded a system crash is most likely to occur. TSR control programs remove PgmAid from memory but fail to reset the Bios User Communications Area for future usage. To accomodate users who wish to load and unload PgmAid using one of the public domain or commercial TSR control programs a second program called PgmAidRL.Com has been added to the package that will take care of releasing the Bios User Communications Area after PgmAid has been unloaded from memory. This will allow the user to reload PgmAid at a later time. WARNING: If you are not releasing PgmAid from memory with a TSR control program but you are running PgmAidRL and then reloading PgmAid you will eventually cause a system crash. This is because PgmAidRL defeats the memory resident interlock in PgmAid and allows multiple copies of the program to be loaded into memory. Do not load multiple copies of PgmAid. A normal application sequence for loading and unloading PgmAid would be: 1. Preserve the system interrupts and memory pointers with your TSR control program. 2. Load PgmAid . . . (some time later) 3. Remove PgmAid from memory with the TSR control program. 4. Run PgmAidRL After these steps are completed you will be able to load PgmAid once again with no ill effects. As mentioned earlier this modification was initiated for users who are well versed in TSR's and how to control them. User's unfamiliar with this topic may wish to avoid using PgmAidRL. **** A pop-up areacode finder is in the works. Register your copy Note of PgmAid and be one of the first to receive notice when the **** pop-up areacode finder is ready! ------------------------------------------------------------ This disk copy provided as a service of The Public (Software) Library the software library of The Houston Area League of PC Users For a copy of the latest monthly software library newsletter and a list of the 600+ disks in the library, call or write The Public (Software) Library P.O.Box 35705 Houston, TX 77235-5705 (713) 721-6104 Newsletter subscriptions are available for $12 a year.