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1994-04-09
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A N S I - S T
The Atari ST ANSI Screen Driver
Copyright (c)1994 Uncensored Software
Version 0.20 (09 April 1994)
A Shareware Release
ANSI-ST is an ANSI screen driver for the Atari ST range of micros
designed to complement the built in VT-52 emulator which has very
little support outside of the Atari community. The majority of
computers today support a form of ANSI emulation - DOS PC's have
the ANSI.SYS screen driver but until now ANSI emulation on the ST
has been limited to a few select comms packages.
To install ANSI-ST on your system copy ANSI_ST.PRG into the AUTO
folder on your boot disk and reboot your ST. Make sure that
ANSI-ST runs after screen accelerators such as Warp9/NVDI. When
running ANSI-ST will only use about 2K of memory.
ANSI-ST works by intercepting any screen output and remapping
ANSI control sequences to ones that are displayable by the ST.
Using this technique allows VT52 codes also to be used therefore
maintaining compatabilty with existing programs.
The translation of ANSI codes is limited to programs that use TOS
to display characters - any programs that use GEM will not be
remapped. Programs that have been tested and support ANSI-ST
are:
ST Desktop (File SHOW option) - view raw ANSI files.
Vanterm - yes NOW it can support ANSI...!
Teddy Term (VT52 mode)
Not all programs can be used with ANSI-ST as some screen
corruption (incorrect colours) occurs, we hopefully will be able
to fix this in future versions. This problem seem to reveal
itself if a program is trying to emulate ANSI itself - the easy
solution to this is to switch to vt52 emulation and let ANSI-ST
do the hard work.
The initial versions of ANSI-ST support a subset of the full ANSI
specification although most commonly used codes are supported. A
colour remapping technique is used to allow 16 colour ANSI to be
used on a 2/4 colour ST screen - this ensures that the foreground
and background colours are never the same. To gain full access
to the ANSI colours you should use a 16 (or higher) colour mode.
ANSI-ST is being released as shareware and the amount of future
development that goes into the product will be governed by the
response that we receive - no response - lower chance of more
versions. The initial version of ANSI-ST is being released just
to 'test the water' as to the requirement for such a program.
The shareware fee for ANSI-ST is £5 (sterling) or $10US and can
be sent to:
Mark Matts
66 Telford Way
Leicester LE5 2LX
England U.K.
Contact email addresses:
Mark Matts: NeST 90:100/300
AtariNet 51:6/200
Stuart Coates: NeST 90:100/304
AtariNet 51:6/204
CIS 100010,2106
Internet scoates@filesys.demon.co.uk
scoates@eurobase.demon.co.uk
Support BBS: SystemST
1200-14400 V.32bis/V.42bis
22:00-07:00 UK Time
Possible future enhancements:
Support for 'bright' text in 2/4 colour modes.
Support for 'underlined' text.
Support for the ANSI vt100 subset.
Support for user defined fonts.
A programmers interface to control ANSI-ST operations.
Additional Utilities:
The following utilities have been included within the ANSI-ST
package.
QDTERM.TOS - A Quick & Dirty TERMinal program - written to
illustrate that with ANSI-ST you don't need to
write loads of ANSI screen driving code to write
an ANSI comms terminal.
Once loaded all input is passed to the ST serial
port, to exit press '¯' (overscore).
This is NOT designed to be a full terminal - if
you want a complete terminal package then try
Teddy-Term2.
SHOWFILE.TTP- Displays a text file on the screen.
Hold Alternate to slow down screen output.
Press SPACE to pause/unpause display.
Press Escape to exit.
ANSIFONT.PRG- Allows the ST to display 'IBM Box Characters' -
this is required if you want ANSI-ST to function
100%. ANSIFONT will only change the TOS font -
the one that GEM uses will remain unchanged. Put
this program in your AUTO folder.
Revision History:
v0.20 (09 April 1994)
o Better handling of colour codes on mono screens.
o Few optimisations.