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Text File | 1990-07-17 | 12.1 KB | 243 lines

Text Screen Editor Version 2.1 by Damien M. Jones Copyright © 1990 Damien M. Jones July 17, 1990 You may want to print this file out. What should have been in the LZH file: EDITV2_1.PRG The editor program. EDITV2_1.HLP The help screen. EDITV2_1.MAN This file. IBM.FNT The IBM character font. What this program is for: This program is useful anytime you need to create a text screen. It allows you a flexible method for adding color to old text screens and for making new ones. Personally, I use it to make screens for my BBS (which I'm still working on), but anywhere one screen of colorful (or plain and drab) text is needed, this program comes in handy. What this program is NOT for: This program does NOT handle animation! It produces text files that start in the upper left corner and proceed to the bottom of the screen. The only difference between its files and normal ASCII files is the VT52 color control sequences that are automatically inserted for you. How to use this program: This program really isn't that difficult to use. That's the way I planned it. It does not, however, use menus. I think that if you're going to be typing most of what goes on the screen, it's annoying to have to take your hands off the keyboard and grab the mouse. To load the program, make sure you have enough RAM. About 70K should be enough. Run EDITV2_1.PRG from medium reso- lution. The program needs EDITV2_1.HLP and IBM.FNT in the same directory or the program will abort. After the program loads those two files, it will present you with the help screen. This screen was produced entirely with the program, so it's a good example of what can be done. It is not meant to be a complete description of every function of the program, but merely something to jog your memory should you forget which key is which. I have tried to make the commands as easy to remember as I could, and for the most part I think I did rather well. Press any key to leave the help screen. DON'T PANIC when you see the screen disappear- -it can be recalled by pressing the HELP key. In the upper left hand corner of the now-blank screen you will see the cursor. Whatever you type will be placed wherever that cursor is, and the cursor will move to the right as you type, similar to a typewriter. Press the BACKSPACE key to back up if you make a mistake. Press the RETURN key to proceed to the next line. Very easy. Most word processors work this way too. You can use the arrow keys to move the cursor around as well, and you can press the HOME key (above the right arrow key) to place the cursor back in the upper left corner. You can move the mouse pointer to any spot on the screen and press the left button. The cursor will move to that point. Now that you've got some letters and stuff on the screen, you're probably wondering where all the color is. No problem. Press the F2 key. Type something. Voila! Red type! Now press F3. Type something. Green text! The first four function keys give you the four colors of text-- white, red, green, and black. Press F4 to get back to black text. Now hold down the shift key and press F3. (That's how you get F13--press Shift and F3.) Now type something. Black text--on a green background. The keys F11 through F14 (Shift and F1 through F4) give you the same four colors as text--but for the background. Now, if you ever mix up the colors and can't tell what's what, you can press F5 to get back to your normal black text on white background. Or, for something different, you can press F15 (Shift and F5) to get white text on a black background. It is important to note that the colors you have chosen will not affect anything on the screen until you type something. You can move the cursor all over the screen, but nothing will be changed until you type something. You can press the F6 key to "invert" the colors. All this means is that you swap the text color and background color. So if you've got red text on a black background, you can press F6 and get black text on a red background. Now you know how to change colors, switch to a red background and move the mouse pointer to an unused portion of the screen. Hold down the right button and move the pointer around. You're "painting" with the current colors. This will erase whatever text you have on the screen, but it's a fast way to add colored boxes. If you press F16, you'll activate what's called "block inverse". What this means is that instead of flipping the colors you're using, you can drag a box around a portion of the screen with the left mouse button, and everything inside of that box will have its colors flipped. Pressing F7 activates the "4-way" cursor. With this option activated, the cursor will move in the direction it was last moved when you type something. So if you move the cursor down, then type something, the cursor will move down instead of to the right as you type. This is most useful for drawing boxes or other things on the screen. Press F7 again to return to the normal cursor. Pressing F8 places you in "high ASCII" mode. This allows you to type almost all of the special characters in the ST's character set, mostly composed of foreign letters and symbols. Pressing F9 puts activates "block painting". You can use the mouse pointer and the left button to drag a box around a section of the screen. You will then be asked if you want "X-Ray", "Block", or "Cancel". "Cancel" gives you a chance to stop if you made a mistake. "Block" fills the box with the current colors the same way as if you'd painted it with the right mouse button. "X-Ray" makes the colors change, but all of the text will show through. This is one great way to add color to old text screens... change the text color, and X-Ray paint a box over a word or paragraph. Or, if you want to take all the color out of a screen, you can press F5 (for black text and white background) and then X- Ray paint the whole screen. Instant bleach! Pressing F10 "matches" the current colors to whatever colors are underneath the cursor. So if you've just moved into a colored area of the screen, you can press F10 and the colors will be changed to match those that are already there, so you can type in the proper colors. Pressing F20 turns on X-Ray painting for the right mouse button. With this on, you can paint with the right mouse button the same way that X-Ray block painting works. This is another great way to add a splash of color to a drab screen--change the colors, press F20, and drag the right mouse button over a word. Instant emphasis! Press F20 to return to normal painting. That's all of the function keys. The rest of the program's functions are activated by holding down the CONTROL key and pressing a letter key. So CTRL-S means hold CONTROL and press S. Pressing CTRL-A allows you to enter a two-digit hex code for an ASCII character. If you are making screens with the IBM character set (see CTRL-F!) then this function comes in handy. Pressing CTRL-B lets you move a rectangular block of text from one location on the screen to another. Drag a box around a section of the screen with the mouse pointer and left mouse button, just the same as if you were painting a block. When you release the left mouse button, the block of text will "stick" to the mouse pointer. Move it wherever you want it, and press the left mouse button again. If you don't want to move the block, press the right mouse button. Pressing CTRL-C inverses the screen colors. This does NOT change anything in the text file--it's just another set of colors to use. Instead of white, red, green, and black, you get black, cyan, magenta, and white, respectively. Press CTRL-C to return to the normal colors. Pressing CTRL-F allows you to access the IBM font. This font contains some special characters for making lines and boxes. However, this also does not change anything in the text file--it's just another set of characters to use to look at the file. Some terminal programs can use this font and the other color set (DMJ Term comes to mind) so if you're making BBS screens you might want to consider it. Pressing CTRL-G shuts off the function keys. This is useful if you need a special character that you get from the function keys. For instance, you can press CTRL-G and then F3 to get the copyright symbol ©. Press CTRL-G again to turn the function keys back on. You can press CTRL-L to load a text file. If it contains color, it will be displayed in color, and you can change it as needed. If it is too long to fit on the screen, you will only be able to see and edit the top part, and when you save the file, you won't save the rest of the file--only what you see on the screen. Pressing CTRL-N will erase the entire screen and reset the colors, and also move the cursor to the upper left-hand corner. You can press CTRL-P to save the current screen as a DEGAS medium resolution picture (.PI2). When you do this, the colors you have selected (by using CTRL-C) are also saved. Press CTRL-Q to exit the program. You can press CTRL-R to redraw the screen if it gets messed up. Occasionally I have noticed Quick ST to mess up the screen slightly when the cursor and mouse pointer overlap. Finally, you can press CTRL-S to save the current screen as a text file. After selecting the filename, you will be asked whether or not to "trim spaces". If you do, the screen will be saved as a normal text file, with the VT52 codes automatically inserted to change the colors. These text files can be viewed from the desktop by double-clicking on the file and selecting "Show" from the alert box. If you don't trim the spaces, the file will be saved "padded out"-- with spaces to make each line fill up the width of the screen. This takes more disk space. You shouldn't need this, but it's there, just in case... I hope you find this program useful. If you do, that's great, it means I didn't waste my time writing this longer-than-expected documentation. If you'd like the source code, leave a message for RGLOVER3 on GEnie, and it should make its way to me... soon I should have a BBS for you to call instead, and also a GEnie account of my own. -Damien Jones Revision History 2.1 Several bugs were fixed. A small bug with the four-way cursor that caused the regular cursor to move in the same direction as the four-way cursor was fixed. A bug with the CTRL-N function not moving the cursor was fixed. And a fairly major bug involving files with no color was fixed. 2.0 Color functions were added. A normal typewriter style cursor mode was added, to supplement the four-way cursor mode. Defaults were changed to match more people's desires. Mouse movement of the cursor was also added. Documentation for the program was written. 1.1 Some bugs were fixed, mostly with file handling. The CTRL-P (Save DEGAS) function was added. 1.0 The original program was made, written mostly so I could edit screens for the BBS program I was working on (and am still working on). It had limited control, no color, and no mouse support.