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19-JAN-86 Turbo Pascal Screen Generator Page 1
This document describes the pre-release version 0.0 of SCRGEN. This version
of SCRGEN accepts a four-view description of a screen, prepared by any text
editor, and produces the Turbo Pascal statements that, when called, will
produce the described screen. Screens may contain text, input fields, boxes
and lines, and be displayed in various foreground/background color
combinations.
1: How To Use It
To use SCRGEN, you must first prepare a text file (non-document, if
you are using WordStar) that describes your screen. This description
is comprised of four "views" of the screen: text and input, boxes,
foreground color and background color. The file itself must consist of
the four sets of 25 lines each, or exactly 100 lines.
1.1: View 1
This is the text and input field screen. Simply arrange the text
the way you want it, using your word processor. Input fields are
represented by the underscore character ("_"), which means that
you can't use that character as part of your text. (If you really
want an underscore character to be part of your text, use another
character now and edit the SCRGEN output to change that other
character to an underscore.)
After you have arranged your twenty-five lines of text and input
fields the way you want them, use your word processor to make
three copies of those lines directly beneath the original. That
will give you the basis for the other three views.
1.2: View 2
This is the "box" view. Boxes and lines may be either double or
single. Draw your boxes and lines using the character "2" to
represent a double line, and "1" to represent a single line.
Double and single lines may be mixed. For example,
11111111111111111111111111111111111
2 2
2 2
2 2
11111111111111111111111111111111111
would produce a box with double lines on the sides and single
lines on the top and bottom.
You may also create boxes with intersecting lines. For example:
22222222222222222222222222222222222
2 1 2
2 1 2
2 1 2
22222222222222222222222222222222222
will produce a double-lined box with a single line contained
within it.
19-JAN-86 Turbo Pascal Screen Generator Page 2
In view 2, all characters but "1" and "2" are ignored. So you can
draw the boxes around your text and, as long as the text does not
contain "1" or "2", leave it alone. If it does contain any "1" or
"2" characters, just replace them with a space or other character
in View 2.
1.3: View 3
View 3 represents the foreground color of each character in views
1 and 2. For view 3 you must replace the characters copied from
view 1 with a characters that represent the color you want each
character to be. Here is the "color chart":
<space> = black (if the background is the default
background
color, this will be altered to white)
K = gray
b = blue B = lightblue
g = green G = lightgreen
c = cyan C = lightcyan
r = red R = lightred
m = magenta M = lightmagenta
y = brown Y = yellow
w = white W = intense white
It's all straightforward, except for <space>. Character positions
occupied by spaces will be white on the default background color
(if unspecified when running SCRGEN, black) and black on any
other color.
1.4: View 4
View 4 represents the background colors and is prepared in the
same way as View 3. The only difference is that the capital
letter (intense) colors are, of course, unavailable. Character
positions containing the space character will be the default
background color.
1.5: Running SCRGEN
Once your four views are completed, exit your editor and run
SCRGEN to produce the Turbo Pascal include file. Here is the run
sequence:
C>SCRGEN <infile> <outfile> [ <option> ... ]
where
<infile> is the file you just created
<outfile> is the name you want to give your include file
<option> is any of the following (more than one option
may be specified; if competing options are given,
the last is the one that will take effect)
C=TURBO : produce Turbo Pascal output. This is the
default.
19-JAN-86 Turbo Pascal Screen Generator Page 3
P=<procname>
where <procname> is the name you want to give the
generated procedure. The default name is
DISPLAY_SCREEN.
Example: let's say that you have prepared input file TEST.SCR and
you want to produce TEST.PAS, which is to contain a procedure
called DISPLAY_HELP. Enter:
C>SCRGEN TEXT.SCR TEXT.PAS \P=DISPLAY_HELP
1.6: Incorporating The Output
If your screen contains any data entry fields, you will have to
supplied name names of the fields being accepted. The code
produced will have a "READLN" call for each input field at the
end of the procedure. Just replace the "????" with the actual
name of the field being accepted.
If you want to test your screen, change the word "PROCEDURE" to
"PROGRAM" at the beginning and the semi-colon after "END" to a
period. Then compile and run.
Normal use, of course, is to either copy the file into the
program that will be using it, or "include" it in with the $I
compiler directive.
2: Future Enhancements
This is a "pre-release" version. That means I would like people to
beta-test it, even though there are more things I want to do with it.
When complete, it will be an Underware product and I'll ask for money
for it.
Here's my "wish list" -- and you can add to it if something occurs to
you. Just let me know at
UNDERWARE