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TheDraw Version 3.00 Color and Monochrome Screen Image Editor Operation Manual COPYRIGHT (C) 1986,1987,1988 by TheSoft Programming Services and Ian E. Davis All Rights are Reserved TheSoft Programming Services 1929 Whitecliff Court Walnut Creek, CA. 94596 Written in Turbo Pascal v4.0 on a Tandy 1000. P R E F A C E This documentation was completely rewritten for version 3.0 of TheDraw. This document is copyright (C) 1988 by TheSoft Programming Services. All rights reserved. The software program TheDraw (TM) is Copyright (C) 1986,1987,1988 by TheSoft Programming Services. All rights are reserved. TheDraw and TheDrawR are registered trademarks of TheSoft Programming Services. TheDraw v3.00 Preface i L I C E N S E TheDraw is not a Public Domain program and is not free. TheDraw is copyright (C) 1986,1987,1988 by TheSoft Programming Services. Non-registered users of this program are hereby granted a limited license to use TheDraw and see if it suitable for their requirements. Any usage of TheDraw other than this limited purpose requires registration of each copy used. Use of TheDraw by non-registered people outside of this limited license is strictly prohibited. TheDraw may NOT be modified in any respect, for any reason, including but not limited to, de-compiling, disassembling, or reverse engineering of the program. The opening title screen must never be altered, removed, or modified by any means. You are free to distribute the PUBLICLY AVAILABLE shareware version of TheDraw to others subject to the above restrictions and also the following: TheDraw must be copied in unaltered form, complete with the file containing this license information. The FULL documentation must be included. No fee may be charged for its use and remuneration may not be accepted for TheDraw. This does not apply to computer access charges the system operators (Sysops) of or organizations owning bulletin board systems, online services, etc... may charge subscribers. System Operators may make TheDraw available for download only if the above conditions are met. If a time limit problem exists because of size, then the documentation must be bundled with the THEDRAW.COM file to insure each users gets it. Distributors of "Public Domain", "Shareware", and/or User Supported software may distributed TheDraw subject to the above conditions only after obtaining WRITTEN permission from TheSoft Programming Services. This condition statement supersedes all previous agreements. Please refer to the section entitled registration/ordering section for additional information on registration, corporate site-licensing and related topics. ----- This license does not apply to the REGISTERED version of TheDraw. Different conditions and agreements pertain to the REGISTERED version of TheDraw, and are included with all registration orders. TheDraw v3.00 License ii O R D E R I N G I N F O R M A T I O N Once a registered user of TheDraw, you are free to utilize the program as often as you wish. Other than having a clear conscience, there are many advantages to registered. You can opt to receive in the mail a registered version of TheDraw with enhanced editing facilities, context sensitive pop-up help, and macro keys. You will also be notified through the mail when a significant enhancement has been made to the program. Once registered, all upgrades are available for a $5 upgrade fee plus the original TheDraw diskette (see below). There are two ways to register. The first is by sending $10 to TheSoft Programming Services along with a registration form. You do NOT receive the registered version of TheDraw for this registration, but are notified of all available upgrades. For an additional $5, we send you the latest shareware and registered versions of TheDraw on disk along with documentation (on disk) and utilities. If unsure, you can send a self-addressed floppy diskette mailer with a formatted diskette and $5 to receive the latest shareware version of TheDraw for evaluation. If you want to receive TheDraw on the new 3½ diskette media, add an additional $5 on each diskette ordered. Please use the following form when placing an order. ----- NON U.S. residents, please send checks drawn on U.S. funds. We will accept non U.S. currency, but you must include an additional $5 to cover exchange handling. UPGRADING TO LATEST THEDRAW ______________________________________________________________________ Users who have registered (and received a diskette) may upgrade to the latest version of TheDraw by sending in their TheDraw ORIGINAL DISK, along with $5 (service and handling). Please use the following order form when upgrading. If there has been an address change, please indicate so on the order form. The original disk must be returned and contain the registered version of TheDraw. The disk will be reformatted and the Master copied onto it. Any disk in poor condition will be replaced by TheSoft. If the serial number label is missing or the diskette does not contain the registered version of TheDraw, the update will be refused and the diskette returned unchanged. TheDraw v3.00 Ordering iii Remit To: TheSoft Programming Services 1929 Whitecliff Court Walnut Creek, CA. 94596 Qty. Description Each Total ____ TheDraw Upgrade to version 3.00 $5.00 ________ (You must return the original diskette that contains your copy of the registered version of TheDraw.) ____ TheDraw Evaluation Copy $5.00 ________ (You supply diskette, no registration) ____ TheDraw Registration $10.00 ________ (Does not include a new diskette with the registered version of TheDraw) ____ TheDraw Registration with 5¼ diskette $15.00 ________ (Registration including diskette with the latest shareware and registered program versions along with manual on diskette). ____ TheDraw Registration with 3½ diskette $20.00 ________ (same as above except on new size media) Subtotal ________ (Bulk Orders see below for discount) Discount [-________] (All non-U.S. orders add $5 Shipping) Shipping ________ (Add $5 for Currency Exchange) Misc. Charges ________ (CA residents please add 6.5% sales tax) Tax ________ TOTAL $________ Name: ________________________________________________________ Company: ________________________________________________________ Address: ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ All checks must be drawn on U.S. Funds in U.S. Dollars. Sorry, no C.O.D. orders will be accepted. TheDraw v3.00 Ordering iv S I T E L I C E N S E If you plan on using TheDraw in a corporate, government or business environment registration is not optional and the 28 day limited license is enforced. For such users, quantity discounts are available under this site license agreement. One MASTER copy of TheDraw (with documentation) will be provided on diskette. The site is responsible for printing the documentation and copying the diskettes for distribution. Backups of the MASTER disks do not count towards the total copies of the license. With all site licenses, the site will supply one contact person with which all correspondence will be made. If a problem should occur, the contact person will call and make arrangements to get a fix for the glitch. Updates to TheDraw will be forwarded to the contact person. When filling out the order form, use contact persons name to avoid confusion at a later date. Following is the current site license discount rates: TOTAL COPIES DISCOUNT 1 - 10 none 11 - 20 5% 21 - 50 10% 51 - 100 15% 101 - 200 20% 201 - 500 25% 501+ 30% NOTE: All prices and discounts are subject to change without notice. Also note that discounts are NOT cumulative and apply to separate orders only. TheDraw v3.00 Site Licensing v W A R R A N T Y TheDraw is provided AS IS without any warranty, expressed or implied. This includes without limitation the fitfulness to a particular purpose or application and any warranties of merchantability. While we tried to be as through as possible while debugging TheDraw, TheSoft Programming Services shall not be liable for any damages, whether direct, indirect, special, or consequential arising from a failure of this program to operate in a manner desired by the user. TheSoft Programming Services shall not be liable for any damage to data or property which may by caused directly or indirectly by use of this program. In no event will TheSoft Programming Services be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of your use or inability to use the program, or for any claim by any other party. ----- If you have a problem with TheDraw please feel free to write and describe the situation. Registered users, please include the serial number found on your diskette. To those people who have registered (with diskette), the physical diskette is warranted against defects in materials and workmanship for a period of 60 days from date of shipment by TheSoft. Any returned disks found bad will be replaced at no charge. TheDraw v3.00 Warranty vi T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S Preface ...................................................... i License Single User License ....................................... ii Giving out Copies ......................................... ii System Operators (Sysops) Info ............................ ii Software Distributors - Read this ......................... ii Ordering Information Registration .............................................. iii Upgrading to latest TheDraw ............................ iii Registration only (no diskette) ........................ iii Registration (diskette sent out) ....................... iii Getting a Trial Copy ................................... iii Getting a 3½ inch diskette ............................. iii Invoice Order Form ........................................ iv Site Licensing ............................................ v Bulk Order Discounts ................................... v Warranty ..................................................... vi Introduction ................................................. 1 Definitions .................................................. 3 System Requirements .......................................... 4 Multitasking Environments ................................. 4 Get Running .................................................. 5 Floppy Disk Installation .................................. 5 Hard Disk Installation .................................... 5 Make it Do Something ...................................... 6 The Demo Files ............................................ 6 Moving to TheDraw version 3.0 ............................. 7 The Setup Utility ............................................ 8 Why Setup? ................................................ 8 Windows and Selecting Options ............................. 9 Saving and Aborting Changes ............................... 9 Running Setup ............................................. 9 Main Menu .............................................. 10 Editor Configuration ................................ 10 Changing a key entry ............................. 10 Allowed Keystrokes ............................... 11 Keyboard Customize .................................. 11 Screen Mode ......................................... 11 TheDraw v3.00 vii The Setup Utility (cont) Colors .............................................. 12 Help Directory ...................................... 13 Memory Usage ........................................ 13 Defaults ............................................ 14 Quit/Save ........................................... 14 Starting TheDraw ............................................. 15 Command Line Filespecs .................................... 15 The Status Line ........................................... 15 HELP! ..................................................... 16 Cursor Control ............................................ 16 Command Summary ........................................... 17 TheDraw Keyboard Commands Alt-A Change Text Color Attributes ....................... 18 Alt-B Block Action Commands .............................. 19 Alt-C Clear Current Screen ............................... 24 Alt-D Set Default Clear Screen Color ..................... 24 Alt-E Change Page Layer Edit Screen ...................... 25 Sprite Editing ................................... 25 Alt-F View Function Key Sets ............................. 26 Alt-G Global Commands .................................... 27 Alt-H Display Help Information ........................... 29 Alt-I Insert a Line ...................................... 30 ALT-J Animation Options .................................. 30 From Normal Edit Mode ............................ 30 From Animation Edit Mode ......................... 32 Alt-K Delete a File ...................................... 36 Alt-L Load Screen from Disk .............................. 37 Alt-M Select Draw Mode (toggle) .......................... 38 Alt-N Ruler .............................................. 38 Alt-O Change Drive/Sub Directory ......................... 38 Alt-P Paint/Fill Commands ................................ 39 Alt-Q Redraw Screen (animator mode only) ................. 39 Alt-R Restore Current Line ............................... 40 Alt-S Save Screen to Disk ................................ 40 Alt-T Tab Setup .......................................... 43 Alt-U Use Color under Cursor ............................. 43 Alt-V View a Screen (not load) ........................... 43 Alt-W Edit Character (animator mode only) ................ 44 Alt-X Exit TheDraw ....................................... 44 Alt-Y Delete Current Line ................................ 44 Alt-Z Erase Cursor Character (animator mode only) ........ 44 Alt-= Toggle Macro Learning Mode ......................... 45 TheDraw v3.00 viii TheDraw Keyboard Commands (cont) Alternate Color Change Options (CTRL-UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT) .. 45 Solid Spaces (SHIFT-SPACE) ................................ 45 Full Screen Editing (CTRL-PRTSC) .......................... 46 The Animation System ......................................... 47 What is Ansi Animation? ................................... 47 Animation Basics .......................................... 47 How to Animate Something .................................. 48 Limitations ............................................... 48 The Presentation Program (THEPP) ............................. 49 Appendix A: Setting up CONFIG.SYS ........................... 51 Appendix B: Programmers Programming Tips .................... 52 Appendix C: Extended/Special Character Set .................. 55 The Future ................................................... 56 Comments ..................................................... 57 TheDraw v3.00 ix I N T R O D U C T I O N: TheDraw is a powerful screen image editor for color and monochrome video users. What does that mean? Literally, TheDraw makes designing and figuring out a video screen display childs play. Its basic premise is this: be easy to use. The most novice computer user can make an Ansi text file screen with TheDraw in only minutes. From that point on, you can explore and use more of the horsepower available in TheDraw. Some people are probably saying "it edits screens... Big deal". This type of person has never known the agony of creating a good looking menu or display for a program (assuming he/she programs), making a fancy batch file intro screen, or having to quickly putting together a computer presentation for the boss. The biggest problem facing most people is we really do not know what will look good until we see it. Manually editing a screen can literally take hours. With TheDraw, you can free form until you really know what is perfect. With the picture in mind, you can quickly develop whatever is necessary or instruct TheDraw to create a data file which can be used. Instead of hours, making a screen takes minutes. For the curious, TheDraw can transform your masterpiece into data files with the following formats: ANSI color text (useful in batch files, BBS's, etc...) ASCII text (compatible with word processors and text editors) BINARY files (generic, useful in most everything) BSAVE (for Basic) ASSEMBLER (for the die-hard coder) TURBO PASCAL (directly compilable source code) C (format is for Turbo C specifically) THEDRAW (custom storage format for FAST loading and saving) TheDraw was long ago originally written as an improvement to a simple program named AnsiDraw written by Amrich Enterprises. Both programs provided similar operation, with TheDraw giving a much enhanced user interface. TheDraw is now vastly improved over the abilities of AnsiDraw, and most other screen editors. It is compatible with most systems that have 150k of free memory available. Monochrome and Color monitor users are supported, and a special keyboard driver allows you to redefine keystrokes that do not operate properly or are used by other programs (registered version only). TheDraw v3.00 Introduction 1 Another feature TheDraw fully supports is Ansi ANIMATION. With this facility you can develop quick and dirty presentations, or simply make a generic screen appear with pizzazz. You can either let TheDraw make an animation sequence from an image, or one can be made from scratch; thus letting you fully control the appearance of your work. TheDraw gives you a maximum of 16000 separate animation "entries" to handle the most complex job. See the section entitle "The Animation System" for more information. To get started using TheDraw right away, refer to the section entitled "Starting TheDraw". This section describes how to install and run TheDraw. Enjoy! TheDraw v3.00 Introduction 2 D E F I N I T I O N S Throughout this documentation you may run across the occasional enigmatic word that needs explaining. The following are some examples you might come across: enigmatic - mysterious or cryptic [ENTER] or C/R - This represents the return key on the keyboard. If you see this in the text, press the Enter key; do not type the actual letters. ESC or [ESC] - Means to press the ESC key on the keyboard. [letter] - Means to press the actual key marked 'letter' on your keyboard. ie: [L] means to press the 'L' key. Alt-[letter] - Alt- is always followed by another character. Together, this symbol means to first press and hold down the ALT key on the keyboard then type the letter key following it. ie: Alt-A means hold down ALT then press 'A'. Ctrl-[letter] - This is executed the same as the ALT key. or ^[letter] Press and hold down the CTRL then hit the letter following. ie: CTRL-A and ^A mean the same thing - hold CTRL then press 'A'. TheDraw v3.00 Definitions 3 S Y S T E M R E Q U I R E M E N T S TheDraw requires an IBM PC/XT/AT or close compatible running MsDos 2.0 or higher. In addition, a Color Graphics or Monochrome adapter plus monitor is needed to run properly. In a minimum configuration 150k of free memory is required. The maximum memory usage is 330k of memory (8 page layers, 16000 animation entries). Any remaining memory can be used to execute a Dos Shell if desired. TheDraw will always attempt to allocate all available memory up to the limits specified using the Setup utility. MULTITASKING ENVIRONMENTS ______________________________________________________________________ TheDraw can be used under multitasking environments provided the full video screen is allocated to it. The program directly accesses video memory and the keyboard hardware for some of its functions. TheDraw is known to operate under Double Dos except for minor problems. Double Dos disables certain keyboard sequences (notably Ctrl-PrtSc). For this situation, people with the registered version of TheDraw can use the Setup utility to redefine the function of Ctrl- Prtsc to another key. Note: It is easily conceivable to cause problems with window environments if the user wishes. Working in another window while TheDraw attempts to refresh its screen will result in information being overwritten. Be warned. Proper support for window environments will be provided in the future. TheDraw v3.00 System Requirements 4 G E T R U N N I N G Setting up TheDraw to operate on your computer is not a great chore. Refer to the section below that applies to you. If you received TheDraw on diskette, it is suggested you backup the disk before proceeding. It never hurts to play it safe. FLOPPY DISK INSTALLATION ______________________________________________________________________ If you obtained a diskette from TheSoft, you are already set to go. You can now jump to the section on "The Setup Utility". You will want to copy all the files onto the diskette you will be using frequently. Because of space requirements, the documentation and demo files are compacted. Use the INSTALL batch file to expand these files onto another diskette. ie: INSTALL FLOPPY <enter> HARD DISK INSTALLATION ______________________________________________________________________ Create a sub-directory of your choice to place TheDraw and files in. Next, copy all files to the sub-directory. Example commands are: MKDIR \THEDRAW Create a sub-directory THEDRAW in the root directory of your hard drive. CHDIR \THEDRAW Put Dos into the THEDRAW sub-directory. COPY A:*.* Copy all files from drive A to the sub- directory. Details of the above commands will not be covered here. Please refer to your Dos manual if you have questions. On the diskette obtained from TheSoft, there is a batch file to simply this process. With the diskette in drive A, type: INSTALL HD <enter> This will do all of the above for you automatically. TheDraw v3.00 Get Running 5 MAKE IT DO SOMETHING! ______________________________________________________________________ By this point you may be eager to start playing with TheDraw; by all means do so. Use of the Setup utility is not absolutely necessary unless TheDraw does not appear to run properly. To run TheDraw simply type from the Dos prompt: THEDRAW [ENTER] After a few seconds, TheDraw will start running and display its title screen. Press a key, and TheDraw is ready. Quickly, two commands you should be familiar with are: ALT-S Save Screen to Disk ALT-X Exit TheDraw The former will save your efforts to disk. The latter will allow you to exit TheDraw back to Dos. Have fun! THE DEMO FILES ______________________________________________________________________ TheDraw comes with two demonstration files to help show some of its capabilities; SHUTTLE.ANS and DEMO.TD. Shuttle.Ans is a simple animation example which you can view from dos by entering: TYPE SHUTTLE.ANS [Enter] Note: You must have the ANSI.SYS driver installed in your CONFIG.SYS file for this to appear properly. See APPENDIX A for more details on the CONFIG.SYS file. The second demo file, DEMO.TD, demonstrates the block editing features of TheDraw. To use it, run TheDraw as described above. Next, press ALT-L and type DEMO.TD [ENTER]. Instructions will appear on screen showing what to do next. TheDraw v3.00 Get Running 6 MOVING TO THEDRAW VERSION 3.0 ______________________________________________________________________ Users of TheDraw versions 2.0, 2.1, or 2.2 will be able to start using version 3.0 right away. The only things the user should be aware of are the revised ALT-E command, and the block copy/move "exchange" command. To flip page layers, the wanted layer must be specified. This differs from the older versions which merely toggled between the available pages. There are many new additions to TheDraw. Some will be apparent (such as the Last block option); some will not. The following is a list of new features added to TheDraw version 3.00: o Multi-Layer sprite editing - Supported in both normal AND animation modes. o Five new animation screen scanners - Angle, Gate, Pyramid, Squares and Wiggle. o Ability to shell to Dos. o Ability to append one animation file onto the end of the current animation file. o Global screen copies now supported in animation mode along with layered editing mentioned above. o Use of the "Last Block" specified. o THEDRAW format files. These files store the complete configuration of TheDraw when the file was saved. This includes the current colors, tab line, cursor position, etc... Useful for quickly saving an animation file or all the current page layers. o Animation Markers, Include Files, and Pausing. Plus many more features! TheDraw v3.00 Get Running 7 T H E S E T U P U T I L I T Y This section describes how to customize TheDraw and install your customizations in the THEDRAW.EXE or THEDRAWR.EXE (registered version only) files. WHY SETUP? ______________________________________________________________________ Setup is the TheDraw installation program; used to customize the TheDraw program (EXE) file. With this utility you can specify screen modes, change edit colors and various other defaults. Setup allows you to change the TheDraw environment in which you operate. It also directly modifies various values within your copy of THEDRAW.EXE or THEDRAWR.EXE. Via Setup you can do the following: o Setup the default video display mode o Change screen colors o Resize TheDraw's usage of available memory o Change save screen default parameters. o Specify initial default filespec wildcards. In the registered version of TheDraw, the Setup utility can also: o Customize or "remap" the editor command keys. o Setup a path to the directory where help files are stored. TheDraw comes ready to run; there is no mandatory installation. After setting up as specified in GET RUNNING, you can run TheDraw. However, you will need to run Setup if you want to do any of the following: o Change TheDraw default colors. o Force a display mode or "snow" checking o Customize the editor commands to preferred sequences. o Adjust memory usage to better suit your needs. TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 8 WINDOWS AND SELECTING OPTIONS ______________________________________________________________________ The setup utility operates in a windowing user environment. You select commands by either pressing the highlighted capital letter of a given option, or using the Up and Down arrow keys to move to your selection and then pressing [ENTER]. For instance, from the main Setup installation menu you can select Editor configuration*, Keyboard customize, Screen mode, Colors, Overlay path*, Memory usage, Defaults, or Quit/Save. Press M to change the memory configuration of TheDraw. * Registered version only. SAVING AND ABORTING CHANGES ______________________________________________________________________ In general, pressing [ENTER] will save any changes. Pressing [ESC] (as many times as needed) will abort a function and return you from a submenu to the main installation menu. Where this convention is not followed, instructions are displayed on the screen for you. RUNNING SETUP ______________________________________________________________________ To get started, type SETUP [ENTER] at the DOS prompt. Once the utility runs, you will be prompted for the filename to modify. This allows you to have several different customized copies of TheDraw on your system. These various copies of THEDRAW.EXE can each have different executable program names. This allows you customize for various editor command-keys, menu colors, etc... if you are so inclined. After selecting a file to edit, SETUP determines what version of TheDraw is being updated (shareware or registered). It then proceeds to the main menu. TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 9 RUNNING SETUP: MAIN MENU ______________________________________________________________________ The main menu presents several options. Each item on the menu is described below: EDITOR CONFIGURATION The editor in TheDraw provides many features, including cursor control, color changing, various text operations, etc... These editing commands are assigned to certain keys, as described in this documentation. This option allows you to change the default assignments for each function. When you select Editor Configuration from SETUP's main menu, the editor installation screen appears. Three columns of information will be immediately notable: o The first (left-most) column describes each configurable function available in the editor. o The second column lists Primary keystrokes. These keys are the defaults by which TheDraw normally operates. o The third column lists Secondary keystrokes. These are optional alternates keystrokes you may press to invoke a given editor action. These keystrokes always take precedence over the primary keystrokes described above. Along the bottom of the screen is a list of the keys used to select and modify entries. Key Action _______________________________________________________________ Up and Down Selects the editor command you wish to change. arrow keys PgUp/PgDn Scrolls up/down one full screen page. [ENTER] Enters the secondary keystroke modify mode. R Restore all editor commands to the original default values. [ESC] Returns to the main SETUP options menu. _______________________________________________________________ TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 10 After pressing [ENTER] to modify a command, the current secondary definition disappears. You can then type in your new definition. Anything may be used for redefining a key except Numbers (0-9), Letters (A-Z,a-z), Enter, Esc, and Backspace. A maximum of four keystrokes for any given editor command is allowed; however, certain key combinations are equal to two keystrokes. These include ALT-(key), cursor movement keys (up, PgDn, Home, etc...) and any keystroke involving a function key (F1, CTRL-F4, etc...). Upon pressing ESC, if anything has been changed you are prompted to save the changes. Next, if there are any duplicate keystrokes SETUP will point out the first occurrence so you can clear up the problem (marked with an asterisk). KEYBOARD CUSTOMIZE The true IBM-PC and certain clones have a Bios bug preventing the Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down keystroke combinations from working properly. TheDraw gets around this by using a custom keyboard driver. SETUP examines the keyboard hardware to see what happens when Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down are pressed. Upon selecting this option, the screen clears and prompts if you wish to continue. Next you are requested to press Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down in that order. SETUP will display scan codes returned by your keyboard for those keys. Next you can experiment to see that everything is indeed working properly. Press Ctrl-Up/Down until satisfied you programmed the correct keys. When ready press [ENTER] to return to the main menu. SCREEN MODE Normally, THEDRAW will automatically determine the correct video mode of your computer. You should only need to change the Screen mode option if: o you think TheDraw is incorrectly detecting your hardware. o you have a Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) that does not produce the "snow" effect. o your computer has a composite video screen, which acts like a CGA with only one color. In this case, you want the Black and White screen option. TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 11 Upon pressing S to select this option, a pop-up menu will appear with the available options. These are fairly apparent: DEFAULT TheDraw will operate in the mode active when first run. BLACK AND WHITE TheDraw will use composite black and white mode (80 column), regardless of the active mode when first run. The original video mode will be selected when you exit TheDraw. COLOR TheDraw will use color mode (80 column), regardless of what mode active when first run. The original video mode will be selected when you exit TheDraw. MONOCHROME TheDraw uses monochrome video mode, and switches back to the previous mode upon exiting. After selecting one of the first three options above (Default, B&W, or Color), SETUP checks the screen for snow. If you see snow or hashing, respond Yes to the prompt that appears. COLOR CONFIGURATION TheDraw holds three complete sets of configurable colors. Which color set is used depends on the initial screen mode specified above. The sets are for Color, Black and White, and Monochrome screen users. A pop-up window prompts for which set to edit. After selecting a color set, another pop-up window appears. These choices are for the type of item you wish to configure. The Edit Screen, Main Help Display, Directory (Load/View) Screen, and Pop-up help if configuring the registered version of TheDraw. Choose the item type to edit. Next, you will see a menu of configuration items under that type. Selecting a menu item will display a view port and list of available colors. The view port shows an example of the screen TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 12 item you chose. It also reflects any changes in colors as you scroll through the color palette. Use the arrows keys to select a color to your liking from the palette. Watch the view port to see how the item looks in that color. Press [ENTER] or [ESC] to save your choice. Now repeat this procedure for every screen color item you want to customize. When done, press [ESC] until you return to the main SETUP menu. HELP DIRECTORY This option only appears when you are editing the registered version of TheDraw. With the Help Directory you can specify a path for TheDrawR to locate its help file. The current path is displayed for you. To change it, simply type in the new directory. Enter a period (.) by itself to use the current directory when TheDraw is loaded. Press [ENTER] without entry to leave unchanged. MEMORY USAGE TheDraw always tries to allocate all available memory up to limits specified by this SETUP option. When fully configured, TheDraw can use as much as 330k of memory. Memory is allocated first for screen page layers and then for the animation system. If you have limited memory, there might not be enough space for 8 page layers, 16000 animation entries and Dos Shell (maximum usage). There may however be enough space for 4 page layers and 5000 animation entries, or one layer and a Dos Shell, or anything in between. This is when you may wish to override the automatic memory allocation. To make TheDraw operate as in earlier versions, you would want just 2 page layers and 5000 entries. Feel free to experiment. Keep in mind that TheDraw will scale down all settings when loaded if there is not enough memory. Upon selecting the option the current settings are displayed for you. The amount of memory occupied by screen page layers and the animation system is also indicated. If you wish to change them answer Yes to the prompt. You can then enter new values for both. TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 13 DEFAULTS TheDraw has certain default values used throughout the program. Some of these are: o Initial edit colors o Initial function key set o Default file save parameters Selecting Defaults from the main menu displays a screen with several Yes/No or numeric fields. Use the up and down arrow keys to select the field you wish to change. Press [ENTER] to change a value. Press [ESC] when satisfied with your changes. QUIT/SAVE Once all changes are completed, select Quit/save at the main SETUP menu. The message: Save Changes? (Y/N) appears along the bottom line of the screen. Reply Yes, and all the changes you have made will be saved into TheDraw. Reply No, and all your changes are ignored. After either reply, you are return to the operating system (Dos). If you ever decide to reset TheDraw completely to factory defaults, simply copy the EXE program file from your original disk (you did make one right?) onto your work disk. If you just want the editor commands restored, select the R command under Editor Configuration. TheDraw v3.00 The Setup Utility 14 S T A R T I N G T H E D R A W COMMAND LINE FILESPECS ______________________________________________________________________ For convenience, TheDraw allows you to specify a filespec from Dos when first running the program. ie: THEDRAW DEMO.TD Only one file may be specified this way. All files are loaded onto page layer one (except for THEDRAW format files, which are discussed under the ALT-S command). THE STATUS LINE ______________________________________________________________________ The status line of TheDraw shows various information about the state of the program. Each structure in the status line is described below: (xx,xx) Displays the current cursor position. Color Indicates the current drawing color. This color is used for any new characters placed onto the screen. Text or Which word is displays indicates if TheDraw is in Draw normal Text or line Draw mode. In Draw mode, moving the cursor with the arrow keys draws a line in the moved direction. Ins Appears when TheDraw is in Insert keystroke mode. In this mode, typing a character shifts everything to the right to make room for the new character. Page:x or Indicate the current screen page edit layer. In Anim:x animation mode (see The Animation System for more details), the word Anim appears. In addition, this structure indicates when TheDraw is in sprite edit mode (see ALT-E). In sprite mode, either message will appear in capital letters. ie: PAGE or ANIM. Set:x Number of the current function key set. This set will immediately after this indicator. Note: The symbol "x" or "xx" indicates a number of some value. TheDraw v3.00 Starting TheDraw 15 HELP!!! ______________________________________________________________________ The shareware version of TheDraw contains two outline help screens available from command mode (no other commands being used) by pressing ALT-H. These outline screens display brief notes about all operations available in the program. The registered version of TheDraw supports context sensitive help. In other words, pressing ALT-H absolutely anywhere in the program will bring up specific instruction on that area of TheDraw. This can be very useful while learning the program initially. CURSOR CONTROL ______________________________________________________________________ The cursor can be moved by using the following keys: Key Action _____________________________________________________ Up Arrow Up one line Down Arrow Down one line Left Arrow Left one position Right Arrow Right one position Home First column of current line End Last column of current line PgUp First line in current column PgDn Last line in current column Ctrl-Home First Character of current line Ctrl-End Last Character of current line (plus 1) Ctrl-PgUp Upper-left position of screen Ctrl-PgDn Lower-right position of screen Tab Next set Tab position (see Alt-T) Shift-Tab Previous set Tab position (see Alt-T) Enter First column of following line _____________________________________________________ Naturally, if you attempt to move past a border no action will be taken. If no tab position follows the current location, pressing [TAB] will return you to column one of the current line. TheDraw v3.00 Starting TheDraw 16 COMMAND SUMMARY ______________________________________________________________________ TheDraw provides the following 33 command functions, available through ALT-Letter or CTRL-Letter key sequences: Alt-A Change Text Color Attributes Alt-B Block Action Commands Alt-C Clear Current Screen Alt-D Set Default Clear Screen Color Alt-E Select Screen Page Layers Alt-F View Function Key Sets Alt-G Global Commands Alt-H Display Help Information Alt-I Insert a Line Alt-J Animation Options Alt-K Delete a File Alt-L Load Screen from Disk Alt-M Select Draw Mode (toggle) Alt-N Ruler Alt-O Change Drive/Sub Directory Alt-P Paint/Fill Commands Alt-Q Redraw Screen (animator) Alt-R Restore Current Line Alt-S Save Screen to Disk Alt-T Tab Setup Alt-U Use Colors under Cursor Alt-V View a Screen (not load) Alt-W Edit Character (animator) Alt-X Exit TheDraw Alt-Y Delete Current Line Alt-Z Erase Cursor Character (animator) Alt-= Toggle Macro Learning Mode (registered version only). Ctrl-PrtSc Toggle Full Screen Editing mode Ctrl-Up Arrow Increment Foreground Color Ctrl-Down Arrow Decrement Foreground Color Ctrl-Left Arrow Increment Background Color Ctrl-Right Arrow Decrement Background Color Shift-Space Put a "Solid" space on the Screen. On the following pages are explanations for each of the above. TheDraw v3.00 Starting TheDraw 17 T H E D R A W K E Y B O A R D C O M M A N D S _________________________________________________ ALT-A: CHANGE TEXT COLOR ATTRIBUTES This function allows you to change the current color attributes used by TheDraw. These attributes "color" any new characters placed on the screen. When you press ALT-A, the screen will change to a display of the available colors and the currently selected colors. The lower portion of the screen contains the two prompts: Please Select Foreground Color (0-31): Please Select Background Color (0-7): The cursor will be flashing immediately after the first prompt. You can now change the current foreground color by using the Up and Down arrow keys to select the wanted value, or by directly entering the number associated with one of the following foreground colors: 0 Black 8 Dark Gray 1 Blue 9 Light Blue 2 Green 10 Light Green 3 Cyan 11 Light Cyan 4 Red 12 Light Red 5 Magenta 13 Light Magenta 6 Brown 14 Yellow 7 Light Gray 15 White Characters can be made to blink by selecting colors from the range 16 through 31. These match the above exactly, except they blink. After changing the foreground color (or if satisfied, not changing it) you can either proceed to the background colors by pressing [ENTER] or pressing [ESC] to return to the edit screen. Background colors are selected in a fashion similar to the foreground colors and may be any of the first eight (0 through 7) colors listed above. There are no background colors available that allow blinking. Pressing either [ENTER] or [ESC] at this point will return to the edit screen. Notes: It is possible to change the colors without using ALT-A. Please see the Ctrl-Arrow Key commands for more details. Monochrome screen users will find background colors generally useless except when set to light gray (7) and you are using a black foreground color of 0 or 16 (blinking black). TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 18 ALT-B: BLOCK ACTION COMMANDS The Block Action Commands provide many facilities for editing and making extensive changes to the current screen. The following options are available: o Move or Copy blocks of text. o Fill in areas with characters, colors or both. o Perform left, right or center text justification. o Draw boxes or outline text with lines quickly and easily. o Delete or simply Erase blocks of text. o Load a block of screen area from a file on disk. o Save just a piece of the current screen to disk. The Block Action Commands in TheDraw are one of the more useful utilities available. After pressing ALT-B, you will see the following prompt: Use [L]ast block or move to Upper-Left corner and press [SPACE]. You can either press [L] to use the last block specified or define a new block. To define a new block, the upper-left and lower-right corners must be specified. Use the arrow keys, PgUp, PgDn, Home or End keys on the keyboard to move the cursor to the wanted locations, then press [SPACE] after you reach each point. The current block is highlighted (colors inverted) to make it obvious. Once you define the upper-left corner of the block, moving above or to the left of it will not invert any text. TheDraw will stop the block marking if you press [SPACE] under this situation. Upon pressing [SPACE] the second time (with an inverted block) you will see the available block option commands. The items on the menu, and their significance are described on the following pages. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 19 COPY - Copy a Block Copies the marked block. Use the arrow keys, PgUp, PgDn, Home or End on the keyboard to move the block copy around. Available sub- commands are: pagE - Change to a different page layer screen. With this option you can choose to stamp (see below) copies of the block on other layers. A small window appears with a prompt for the new page layer. Enter a number or press [ESC] to abort. Toggle - Toggles between single layer and sprite editing modes (see ALT-E for discussion on sprite editing). In sprite mode, any text on a higher numbered page layer will appear "under" any text on the current page. Stamp - Makes a copy of the current block at the current position. Additional copies can be done as many times as wished. Under - Toggles between moving the block "above" or "under" the current page layer. The block copy starts in above mode. In above mode the entire block is visible, no matter where it is moved. In under mode, the block appears UNDER any other text on the current page layer. It will only show through the black spaces on the current layer. Note: Under mode also allows an interesting effect. If you are sprite editing (see ALT-E command) the block will appear to move -between- the current layer and the layers below it. [ENTER] Saves all changes made to all layers. [ESC] Aborts and removes all changes made to all layers. MOVE - Move a Block Moving a block operates identically to copying a block (see above). The only difference is the block is "cut" out from the current screen, leaving a hole behind. This hole is filled with spaces and the current default background color (see ALT-D regarding default background color). All sub-commands are identical to the block copy described above. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 20 FILL - Fill a Block Fills the marked block based on a specified sub-command. The available options are listed below: Attribute - Changes both foreground and background color attributes to current values shown in status line. Fore - Changes just the foreground color attributes to current values shown in status line. bacK - Changes just the background color attributes to current values shown in status line (is this sounding familiar by now?) Use - Changes both foreground and background color attributes to those under the CURSOR when you first pressed ALT-B. This is not the upper-left block corner, but the position on the screen the cursor was sitting when block commands were first selected. Character - Prompts for a keyboard character or special function set symbol (see ALT-F command). Solid spaces can be used by pressing Shift-Space. The block is then overwritten using whatever was selected. The color attributes at any given position are not changed, just the character at that position. Both - Combines both the Attribute and Character fill operations described above. A character is prompted for, then everything in the block is overwritten using that character with the current color attributes from the status line. These commands offer a lot of flexibility; however, nothing will satisfy everyone. For this reason, the "last block" option was added. To perform one fill operation, select the last block, and do another fill operation, etc... is now done quickly and easily. In animation mode, the Attribute, Fore, bacK, and Use options actually change characters in the animation sequence (no new characters are added). Use of the Character or Both option in Animator mode however WILL add additional characters to the animation sequence. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 21 TEXT - Block Text Operations Performs various text operations on the specified block. Available sub-commands are: Box - Draws a box using the current function set. The box border is defined by the edges of the block area. The contents of the box are left unchanged, however anything where the box lines are actually drawn will be overwritten. Outline - Operates similar to the Box command, except the contents of the block are examined first. The box border will be adjusted to just accommodate all words either fully or partially contained by the block area. For instance, assume you just had one character in the center of the edit screen. You then mark the entire screen as a block, and select text outline. The result would only be a small box around the character. Going the other way, assume you a long word (no spaces) and only block marked the center character. Text Outline would then expand the edges of the block to accommodate the full size of the word. Note: the expansion is only done for words INITIALLY part of the block. Any words the block expansion happens to go over are ignored, and not considered by Text Outline. Center - Text contained or partially contained by the block is centered. The way this is done is similar to the text Outline described above. Each line of characters considered is expanded to just enclose all words. The string of words is then centered on the position of the block. Left - Text contained or partially contained is moved to the left edge of the block. Block expansion is used so words are not split apart. Right - Identical to Left except contained or partially contained text is moved to the right edge of the block using Block expansion. These commands are useful making menu displays or short memos or letters, etc... TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 22 DELETE - Delete a block This command is fairly intuitive. The block is completely removed. Anything on the edit screen to the right of the block is shift over to fill in the space. The area previously occupied by the shifted text is filled with spaces using the default background color (see the ALT-D command regarding default background colors). ERASE - Erase a block Erases the block, without changing anything other portion of the edit screen. The block is erased using spaces and the default background color (see above). The following commands are available only in normal (non-animation) screen edit mode: LOAD - Load a block Imports a block of data from another screen saved on disk. The current image is saved, then you are prompted for the import filespec to load (see ALT-L for details on loading files). The import image is then loaded onto the screen, and an inverted area of the defined block size appears. Move this inverted area using arrow keys, PgUp, PgDn, Home or End to the wanted portion. Press [ENTER] to save a copy of the inverted area appear in the original edit screen. The rest of the import image is discarded. SAVE - Save a block Operates almost identically to the normal save screen command (see ALT-S for information on saving edit screens). The difference being that what is saved is restricted to the defined block. In addition, TheDraw format files for blocks are not available. The following command is available only in animation edit mode: RESCAN - Rescan a block Operates just like the ALT-J animator rescan option, except only the marked block is rescanned. The marked block area is first erased from the animation sequence, then the block is rescanned and added onto the end of sequence. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 23 ALT-C: CLEAR CURRENT SCREEN This operation of this command should be apparent. Once selected, the following prompt appears: Do you want to CLEAR this Page or [A]ll Page Layers? (Y/N/A) Selecting [Y]es or pressing [ENTER] will clear the current page layer and nothing else. Selecting [N]o or pressing [ESC] will abort the command. Selecting [A]ll will prompt to verify the command. If you proceed, ALL page layers will be cleared. Useful if you quickly need a completely clean slate. The clearing of a given page layer is done by using spaces and the default background color (see ALT-D below). ALT-D: SET DEFAULT BACKGROUND COLOR The default background color is used whenever TheDraw must erase a portion of the screen. Examples of commands where this is used are: o Clear Current Screen. o Block Delete, Erase, and Move. o Text Operations which move words. o Use of the Backspace or Delete keys to remove characters. o Inserting or Deleting of Lines. All these commands "clear" an area of the screen in one way or another. TheDraw clears an area using spaces with a default background color specified using this command. When you select ALT-D, the screen changes to a display of available colors and the current default background color. In the lower portion of the screen is the prompt: Please Select Background Color (0-7): The cursor will be flashing after this prompt. You can now change the default background color by using the Up and Down arrow keys to select the wanted value, or by directly entering the number associated with a color (see ALT-A for available colors). Press [ENTER] or [ESC] to return to the edit screen. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 24 ALT-E: EXCHANGE EDIT SCREENS The exchange edit screen command allows you to select a different page layer for editing. Up to eight simultaneous layers can be used at once, in either normal or animation modes. With this facility, you can load several images, copy/exchange different parts and do much more. After pressing ALT-E, the following prompt appears: Display Page Layer (1-8), Toggle Single/Layers, or [ESC]? The number of available layers (8 here) will vary depending on how TheDraw has been configured. To select a different page layer, simply press the number. The second option, [T]oggle Single/Layers, is to toggle the sprite editing facility of TheDraw. Sprite mode is indicated by with word "Page" or "Anim" appearing in capital letters in the status line (ie: PAGE). Sprite editing allows you to see everything "underneath" the current page layer. Imagine several sheets of glass, stacked on top of one another. If you look down on the top-most sheet, you can see anything placed on a piece of glass lower down. The sprite editing mode of TheDraw is akin to the layers of glass described above. In this case, layer one is the top-most sheet of glass. Page layer eight (8) is the bottom-most sheet of glass. ie: ┌────────┐ .│ . │ . │ . │ Bottom-Most Layer ┌────────┐ 8│ ┌─┴──────┐ │─────┘ ┌─┴──────┐ │ │ . │ │ │3│ . Top-Most Layer │ │2├─┘ │ 1├─┘ └────────┘ Naturally, an object or character closer to the top will cover anything under it. In TheDraw, anything other than a non-solid black space will conceal the contents of a lower layer. Another useful feature about sprite editing is only the current page layer may be changed. Nothing you do will alter a layer below (short of clearing all layers), even though you can see its contents. The current layer can be moved around, have lines deleted, etc... Anything lower down is protected unless you specifically change to that page layer for editing. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 25 A question that now comes to mind, is what can be done with this facility? Answer: Plenty. Imagine you have a screen made of several distinct parts, say a backdrop with figures on it. Now a figure must be moved to make room for something else. Unless "block" shaped, the block move command (ALT-B) is tedious to use. For something tree shaped, something more convenient is desired. Using sprite editing each figure could have its own layer, with the backdrop placed on the bottom-most layer. To move a figure, you merely switch to its layer, and use the global screen move command (ALT-G). Nothing could be simpler. To see the result of your change, switch back to the top-most layer. Menu making can be made easier using sprites also. Put together the basic outline (lines, boxes, etc...) on one page layer, then switch to a higher up layer for the text. If you do not like the initial text, erasing it will not harm the outline. There are endless more possibilities waiting to be discovered. ALT-F: VIEW FUNCTION KEY SETS This command simply shows a display of the 100 special characters supported by TheDraw. These characters are stored in ten separate "function key sets". The currently selected set is displayed in the TheDraw status line. To change the current function key set, press ALT following by a function key 1 to 10. ie: ALT-F7 will select function key set 7. The actual characters are accessed using the function keys by themselves. If function key set 7 was selected, pressing [F2] would display the second character in that set (a smiley face). Note: There are additional extended or special characters and symbols not in the TheDraw function key sets. Appendix C contains a complete list of all special characters supported by the IBM-PC (tm) extended character set. Those already built in are marked by an asterisk. To access these characters press and hold down the ALT key. Now using the numeric keypad on the side of the keyboard, type in the number associated with the wanted character. Once done, release the ALT key. The character will then appear. ie: press and hold ALT. Now type 65 on the numeric keypad, and release ALT. The letter "A" will appear. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 26 ALT-G: GLOBAL COMMANDS The global commands offer many facilities for doing "global" changes to the entire screens. All of these commands could be duplicated with block operations; they exist for convenience. For the curious, after each option the equivalent command(s) are listed. The following selections are available: o Copy the current screen to another page layer. o Move/Rotate the current screen around its borders. o Globally fill the screen with colors and/or characters. o Perform text operations globally on the text. After pressing ALT-G the available commands are listed. The items on the menu are described below: COPY - Copy Screen The command first prompts for the destination page. The current screen is then copied to the specified page layer. In animation mode this has the effect of first deleting everything on the destination layer, then copying from top to bottom the current screen to it. (ALT-E <destination>, ALT-C <Y> <N>, ALT-E <current page>, ALT-B <mark entire screen> <C> <E> <destination> <Enter>) MOVE - Move/Rotate Screen Moves the entire screen around its borders. Use the arrows keys to rotate the screen. Press [ENTER] when satisfied or [ESC] to leave the screen as it was. ie: moving the screen upwards will "rotate" the line at the top of the screen down to the bottom of the screen. (ALT-B <mark entire screen> <M>) TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 27 FILL - Fill Screen Fills the entire screen based on a specified sub-command. The available options are listed below (these are identical to the block fill commands): Attribute - Changes both foreground and background color attributes to current values shown in status line. Fore - Changes just the foreground color attributes to current values shown in status line. bacK - Changes just the background color attributes to current values shown in status line. Use - Changes both foreground and background color attributes to those under the CURSOR when you first pressed ALT-G. This is not the upper-left screen corner, but the position on the screen the cursor was sitting when global commands were selected. Character - Prompts for a keyboard character or special function set symbol (see ALT-F command). Solid spaces can be used by pressing Shift-Space. The screen is then overwritten using whatever was selected. The color attributes at any given position are not changed, just the character at that position. Both - Combines both the Attribute and Character fill operations described above. A character is prompted for, then everything on the screen is overwritten using that character with the current color attributes from the status line. These commands are identical to the block action fill commands. In animation mode, the Attribute, Fore, bacK, and Use options actually change characters in the animation sequence (no new characters are added). Use of the Character or Both option in Animator mode however WILL add additional characters to the animation sequence (4000 characters exactly). TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 28 TEXT - Global Text Operations Performs various text operations on the screen. Available sub- commands are: Box - Draws a box using the current function set. The box border will be the defined by the edges of the screen. The inside of the box is left unchanged, however anything where the box lines are actually drawn will be overwritten. Outline - Operates similar to the Box command, however the contents of the block are examined first. The box border will be adjusted to just accommodate all words contained by the screen. For instance, assume you just had one character in the center of the edit screen. The result of using global text outline would only be a small box around the character. Center - Text in the screen is centered. The way this is done is similar to the text Outline described above. Each line of characters considered is reduced to just enclose all words. The string of words is then centered in the screen. Left - Text is moved to the left edge of the screen. Right - Identical to Left except text is moved to the right edge of the screen. These commands operate similarly to the block action text commands. ALT-H: DISPLAY HELP INFORMATION ______________________________________________________________________ The help screens provide a quick reminder for the various commands supported by TheDraw. The two screens briefly describe most available functions. The registered version of TheDraw supports context sensitive pop-up help for the ENTIRE program. Typing ALT-H at any position will display specific help on what you are doing. Try it, you'll like it! TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 29 ALT-I: INSERT A LINE Inserts a line at the current position. The current line and all those below it are shifted down. The bottom line is lost. This command is not reversible, so use with care. ALT-J: ANIMATOR OPTIONS The Animator Options command operates differently depending on which mode you are currently in (Normal or Animator). ALT-J FROM NORMAL MODE ______________________________________________________________________ When in Normal mode, selecting ALT-J will put TheDraw in animation mode. To convert the existing normal screen images (static images) to animation entries, a "scan method" must be specified. The particular scan method used tells TheDraw how to read your static images for display. Ten different scan methods are available: TOP - Scan Top to Bottom The static page layers are all scanned from their upper-left to lower-right corners. The scan goes across the screen (left to right). The next line down is then scanned, and so on. BOTTOM - Scan Bottom to Top Exact opposite of TOP. The static page layers are scanned from their lower-right to upper-left corners. The scans starts on the bottom line, and goes across the screen (right to left). The next line up is then scanned, and so on. LEFT - Scan Left to Right Similar to TOP, except the scan goes down the screen (top to bottom). The next column over is then scanned, and so on. RIGHT - Scan Right to Left Exact opposite of LEFT, and similar to BOTTOM. Scan goes up the screen (bottom to top), starting the right-most column. The next column to the left is then scanned, and so on. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 30 SCRAMBLE - Random Scramble Scan Each static page layer is scanned in a completely random order. ANGLE - Angle Scan Scans each static page layer from upper-left to lower-right corners, using a backward angle approach. ie: scan character then move down to next line and backup one position. AAAAAAAAAA BBBBBBBBB CCCCCCCC DDDDDDD etc... GATE - Gated Scan Alternating lines scan from opposite sides of the screen forwards and backwards going across. The first line will scan left to right going across the screen. The second line scans right to left across the screen. The third line scans as the first, etc... All lines are processed at once, so the screen appears "gated". PYRAMID - Pyramid Scan Scans in a "pyramid" shape, starting from bottom center of screen. . .D. cDCD. tDCBCD. eDCBABCD. SQUARES - Squares or Spiral Scan Scans static screen images using squares. The border of the screen is first scanned (progressing clockwise). The next smaller square is then scanned, and so. Produces a spiral effect. WIGGLE - Wiggle Scan Similar to GATE, except only one line is processed at a time. Produces a snaking line appearance starting from the top of the screen. Scan first goes across screen, then returns on next. The cycle is then repeated. If you have ideas for more animation scanners, please send them! TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 31 Once the animation scan is completed, then screen will be cleared and redrawn. At this point TheDraw will operate as normal, except everything is sequenced by the animation system. Please refer to the section "The Animation System" for more details on its use. ALT-J FROM ANIMATOR MODE ______________________________________________________________________ When already in animator mode, selecting ALT-J presents several facilities for managing the animation system. The following commands are available: o Specify Animation Include Files o Toggle storing of cursor movements o Convert animation screens to normal mode static screen images. o Rescan current animation screens. o Enter a pause into the animation sequence. The registered version of TheDraw also supports: o Adjust Animation Limiting o Specify Animation Markers Each item on the menu is described below: INCLUDE - Specify Animation Include File When creating an ANSI file, TheDraw allows text from other files to be "included" in the one it creates. Ten different files can be included in any given sequence at any given point in the sequence. When TheDraw includes another file, it copies everything in the include file to the new output file TheDraw is making. Once the output Ansi file is created, the include file is not needed again. The include file need only be present when TheDraw is actually copying text from it. Include files are only read when TheDraw actually saves a file. They are ignored by ALT-Q. If you wish to see what everything looks like before saving, use the View option described below. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 32 Upon choosing the INCLUDE option, a window will appear on the screen. All currently defined include files will be listed, along with their position in the animation sequence. The following sub- commands are available: SET - Sets an include file at the current animation position. In the shareware version of TheDraw, this will always be the end of the current animation sequence. In the registered version, this is the current animation limit position. This allows include files to be easily specified "after the fact", anywhere in the animation sequence (see Limit below). CLEAR - Erases the include file entry you specify. No verify is done before the entry is deleted, so be warned. VIEW - Displays the entire animation sequence, with all specified include files. Very useful for testing the appearance of things. Press [ESC] once when done editing the include files. All changes are saved. LIMIT - Specify Animation Limit (registered version only) The animation limit facility of TheDraw provides for a powerful animation editing system. You can easily correct mistakes, insert, delete or do anything else in the MIDDLE of any animation sequence. To make it work, you specify a point for TheDraw to temporarily stop displaying the animation sequence. For example, assume you had a sequence with 5000 entries. You could limit it to 2000, correct a spelling mistake, then quickly set the limit back to 5000. When limiting is on, TheDraw operates exactly as before, except everything above the limit is held out of the way. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 33 Upon choosing the LIMIT option, you can specify the animation limit position using the following keys: Up/Down Arrows Advance/Backup limit by one position. PgUp/PgDn Advance/Backup limit by 100 positions. Home Go to start of sequence (position = 0). End Go to end of sequence (all entries). marKer Move to the position of an animation marker. Selecting this command displays a window of all currently set animation markers. After choosing a marker, the animation limit moves to the position of the marker. Assuming you have set markers in strategic places, this allows you to quickly bounce around an animation sequence looking for a particular spot. Press [ENTER] to save your changes to the animation limit. Pressing [ESC] resets the animation limit position to its entry value. MARKER - Specify Animation Markers (registered version only) Markers are used to "mark" different places in the animation sequence for later reference. Once set, markers can be used for changing the animation limit position (see above) and viewing just portions of the animation sequence. They can be useful in locating things forgotten or set aside until later, editing images a page at a time, etc... Upon choosing the MARKER option, a window will appear on the screen. All currently defined markers are listed, along with their position in the animation sequence. The following sub-commands are available: SET - Sets a marker at the current animation limit position. This allows markers to be easily specified anywhere in the animation sequence. You are first be prompted for which marker to change. If the marker is already set, it will be erased before continuing. After you specify a marker, you can then enter a comment (32 characters). CLEAR - Erases the marker you specify. No verify is done before the entry is deleted, so be warned. VIEW - Displays the animation sequence, up to a specified marker. Useful for reminding yourself of what happens early in a 16000 entry animation sequence. Press [ESC] once done editing markers. All changes are saved. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 34 MOVEMENT - Toggle Storage of Cursor Movements Toggles whether or not TheDraw stores actual movements of the cursor. Normally only characters actually typed are recorded; however, if the cursor movement toggle is on then all movements of the cursor are also stored. Cursor movements are being stored whenever the ANIM symbol in the status line is flashing. If you are still in doubt, watch the animation entry count. It will increase every time you move the cursor. NORMAL - Convert to Normal Edit Mode. Converts what appears on the screen to normal mode images. All animation is erased after executing this command. You are first prompted to verify before continuing. In the registered version, anything not displayed because of animation limiting is lost. Only what appears exactly on the screen when you select this command is converted to normal mode images. RESCAN - Rescan the Screens Selecting this command prompts for an animation scan method as described above in the ALT-J FROM NORMAL MODE section. Everything in the animation sequence is first erased, then the images on the screens are rescanned. In the registered version, any animation sequence not displayed because of animation limiting is NOT lost. It will still be available after this operation is done. This differs from the above sub-option and allows you to go back and rebuild something which did not cut it the first time. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 35 PAUSE - Animation Pausing Allows the entering of pauses into the animation sequence. With this command it is possible to have TheDraw pause for a key or wait a specified number of seconds anywhere while displaying an animation sequence. This can be very useful in presentations. After selecting PAUSE, the following sub-commands are available: TIME_PAUSE Creates a pause for a specified number of seconds (the pause can be aborted by pressing any key when actually displayed). You are prompted for the number of seconds to delay. KEY_ONLY_PAUSE Creates a pause for a key to be pressed. CLEAR Erases pauses from the animation sequence. TheDraw searches backwards from the current animation position for a Pause. If one is found, you can DELETE, VIEW up to this pause, or scan for the NEXT pause before this one. Press [ESC] to abort clearing a pause. Pauses are observed whenever you redraw the animation sequence with ALT-Q. When you save an ANSI file, it is not possible to produce exactly equivalent pausing (pauses for a key are impossible). For this reason, a small separate presentation program (THEPP) is included with TheDraw. This program duplicates the operation of the ALT-Q command, and uses THEDRAW format data files. See section entitled "The Presentation Program" for information on using THEPP. ALT-K: DELETE A FILE Deletes a specified file from disk. Use this option to free up disk space when the need arises. The directory file selector (see ALT-L below) displays everything in the current directory. Use the arrow keys to select a file to delete, or simply type in the filename at the bottom of the screen. Press [ENTER] to select the file. TheDraw will then check for the file. If it exists, you are prompted to verify before continuing. This is your last change before you delete something you might regret later. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 36 ALT-L: LOAD SCREEN FROM DISK This command allows you to load any ANSI text, ANSI Animation, ASCII text, BINARY dump, Basic BSAVE or THEDRAW format file. You are prompted to continue if the current screen image has not been saved. The directory file selector next displays all files in the current directory for convenience. At this point you can use the arrow keys and PgUp/PgDn keys to select a file or simply type in the wanted filename at the bottom of the screen. Press [ENTER] to select the file. If you type in the filename, a file extension of ".ANS" is assumed unless otherwise specified. The following filename extensions are required you wish to have TheDraw successfully load them: Binary Dump .BIN Basic BSAVE .BSV TheDraw Format .TD Any file without one of the above extensions is assumed to be an ASCII or ANSI file. Assembler, Pascal, and C format files cannot be reloaded, except as Ascii text. You must keep another copy of those screens safely somewhere in one of the above loadable formats. Binary, BSave and TheDraw format files load full screen 25 line images. If you are not in full screen edit mode, those lines hidden by the status information are stored. Binary files may be only stored as blocks (see block save under ALT-B). To load a binary block dump, TheDraw must know the width of the block. If detected, TheDraw will prompt for this value. When loading Ansi or Ascii, only the first 24 displayed lines are stored. Any extra are discarded. Do not be alarmed by Ansi files which can be hundreds of lines long. So long as the cursor never goes below line 24, everything will load properly. Ansi animation is automatically detected by TheDraw using the following process: If the cursor suddenly moves to a place it normally would never go, this is an animator file. Extremely complex algorithm huh? TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 37 ALT-M: SELECT DRAW MODE TheDraw supports the "drawing" of lines. This is easily done using the arrow keys while in Draw mode. The characters used in the lines are those normally available via the function keys from the current function key set. Only the first four sets of characters contain lines. If a function key set without lines is selected, the first set (single lines) is used. Draw mode is indicated by the word "Draw" at the bottom of the screen. In draw mode, everything operates without change. Typed characters still appear. The only change is that using the arrow keys makes a line appear in the direction moved. ALT-N: RULER The Ruler command places a pair of intersecting lines on the screen. The point of intersection represents the position of the cursor. The ruler can be moved using the arrow keys, PgUp, PgDn, Home and End. Press [ENTER] to save the new cursor location, or press [ESC] to return to the initial cursor position. Use this command to help line up rows or columns of text or figures. ALT-O: CHANGE DRIVE/SUB DIRECTORY This command requires the use of DOS 2.0 or higher to operate. This command allows you to change the default directory or path (displayed when loading or viewing a file). All sub-directories of the current path are displayed for you. A new directory can be selected by using the arrows keys or typing in the pathname. Press [ENTER] to change to that directory. Note that the details of sub-directories are not covered here. Please refer to your dos manual for that. For example, if you were on drive C in a sub-directory named GAMES, you could switch to the subdirectory UTILITY of drive D by entering "D:\UTILITY". You could then get back to the directory GAMES by simply entering "C:" (no backslash). TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 38 Alt-P: Paint/Fill Commands This command allows enclosed areas to be easily filled with characters and/or attributes. An enclosed area is made by using lines (from function key sets 1-4) or using the Draw command (see ALT-M). To use this command, position the cursor inside the area then press ALT-P. The following sub-commands are available: ATTRIBUTE - Changes all foreground and background color attributes within the enclosed area to those values shown in the status line. CHARACTER - Prompts for a keyboard character or special function set symbol (see ALT-F command). Solid spaces can be used by pressing Shift-Space. All enclosed characters are then overwritten using whatever was specified. No color attributes are changed, just actual character symbols. BOTH - Combines both the Attribute and Character paint operations above. A character is prompted for, then everything in the area is overwritten using that character with the current color attributes from the status line. In animation mode, the Character and Both options add new entries to the animation sequence; nothing is deleted. The Attribute command however only changes the color attributes of characters already in the animation sequence. No new entries are added. ALT-Q: REDRAW SCREEN (available in animation mode only) This command redraws the animation sequence on the screen. With this you can see how your work is developing. You are prompted for the display speed to redraw at. Available speeds are from 0 (fastest) to 255 (crawl). A value of about 40 is generally a good speed to view at. Be warned that 255 literally is a crawl speed, displaying only about two-four characters per second (standard PC/XT). A slow redraw can be broken out of by pressing any key. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 39 ALT-R: RESTORE CURRENT LINE Restores the current line to original contents if you make a mistake while entering in text. Removes all changes to the line made by the user. Once you move to a new line however, all changes are permanent. ALT-S: SAVE SCREEN TO DISK The Save Screen command offers many formats for saving the entire current screen. The available formats are: Ansi, Ascii, Asm, Binary, BSave, Pascal, C and TheDraw. Please note that all color attributes are lost in an Ascii file. All other formats store the complete screen with color information (unless you specify otherwise). The entire screen is saved when using this command. If you do not require the entire 80x25 screen, use a block save (see ALT-B). These can be more effective at times. You are first prompted for which storage format to use. In animation mode, only ANSI and THEDRAW formats are available. The items on the menu are discussed below: ANSI - Ansi text file If you are in full screen mode, TheDraw first displays a warning about line 25 (bottom-most line) not being saved. Respond Yes if you wish to continue with the save. Line 25 cannot be saved, since a linefeed in the middle of the line would cause unwanted screen scrolling. You are next asked what initial screen preparation you want before the image is displayed. Options are: CLEAR - Clears the screen HOME - Move cursor to upper-left corner of screen NONE - Leave screen and cursor position as is. The next prompt is for the maximum length of each line in the saved file. TheDraw is capable of producing over 1300 characters per screen line (if every character had a differing color combination). Some applications and programs (ie: other text editors) cannot handle so many characters per line. This option limits the output line length sacrificing time to display the image. If length is no problem, specify [N]one for the most efficient file. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 40 Lastly, you are prompted for the Ansi display speed (a number from 0 to 50). The operation is similar to the ALT-Q animator redraw screen function. Things are slowed down by adding redundant codes after everything that is displayed. A value of 50 is approximately equal to an ALT-Q speed of 255 (extremely slow). Experimentation will find the most appropriate speed for your needs. ASCII - Ascii Text (no colors) If you select ASCII, you are prompted if you really want a non- color image made before continuing. The Ascii file produced is similar to any file produced by a normal text editor (ie: Turbo Pascal or Sidekick editor). ASM - Assembly Language ASM produces a list of DB data statements for use by assembly language programmers. Addition sub-options are available to specify the assembler data format. You can specify to Crunch, output only Ascii characters, or dump a normal file. Crunching uses a custom method of compressing color changes and strings of identical characters to make the smallest possible file. To display a crunched file you must use the uncruncher routine included separately with TheDraw (UNCRUNCH.ASM). This file has comments explaining its use. The Ascii format saves all characters on the screen. No color attribute information is stored however. The normal file is a 4000 byte binary dump of the screen, converted to a assembler/compiler compatible format. BINARY - Binary Screen Dump Produces a straight 4000 byte dump of the video screen. This data format is generic. It is useful for many things, such as loading screen images directly to video ram, etc... BSAVE - Basic BSave Screen Dump This file is identical to a binary screen dump, except loading codes for Basic are placed at the front. These files can be loaded from basic with: DEF SEG = &HB800 : BLOAD"filespec.BSV",0 If you have a monochrome monitor, replace the B800 with B000 in the above line. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 41 PASCAL - Turbo Pascal Compatible Screen Dump This operates the same as the ASM option described above, except the output is in a Turbo Pascal compatible CONST structure. See Appendix B for the section entitled "Programmers Programming Tips". C - Modern C Formatted Compatible Screen Dump (Turbo C) Again, this operates the same as the ASM option. The format is for the new "modern C" string continuation structure. THEDRAW - TheDraw Setup Save This format saves everything about the current configuration of TheDraw. In normal edit mode, all occupied page layers are saved. In animation mode, the animation sequence is dumped to disk. All other parameters are saved also (ie: current colors, tab line, cursor position, current page layer, etc...). The TheDraw format file also has the benefit of being the fastest way to loading and retrieve screen images - Eight page layers or 16000 animation entries take only seconds to load. Following the above preliminary prompts, you are prompted for a filename. If the file already exists, you are prompted to verify the save. If you do not specify a filename extension, TheDraw assumes the following: .ANS ANSI compatible files .ASC ASCII text files .ASM Assembler files .BIN Binary dumps .BSV Bsave files .PAS Pascal files .H C files. A file without an extension can be specified by placing a period as the last character of the filename (ie: TESTFILE. ). After entry of a valid filename, the screen is saved to disk. For suggestions on using the screen files created by TheDraw see Appendix B. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 42 ALT-T: TAB SETUP This command allows you to set tabs in the editor (positions where the [TAB] key stops). Initially the positions are at every tenth column. Available sub-commands are: SET - Set a new tab position. Move the cursor to the wanted position then press 'S'. CLEAR - Clears tab at current cursor position RESET - Resets tab line to initial settings (every ten spaces). ERASE - Delete all current tab setting for a clean slate. INCREMENT - Prompts for a step size. From the current cursor position, every nth location is then set. This allows you to quickly specify, say every fourth position if your need requires it. Press [ESC] to leave the tab set command. ALT-U: USE COLORS UNDER CURSOR Changes current status line colors to those currently under the cursor. This provides a fast method to change to colors already displayed on the screen. ALT-V: VIEW A SCREEN This command allows you to look at a previously saved image on disk. The current page layer is not altered by using this command. You might use this in conjunction with the block load/import function (see ALT-B). Viewing a screen is dome similar to loading (see ALT-L) except the loaded image is not remembered. Once the image is fully displayed, a window appears with instructions. Press [ENTER] to exit view mode. Pressing any other key will make the window disappear to facilitate viewing. After about 30 seconds the window will reappear to remind you about view mode (in case you leave the computer and then return). TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 43 ALT-W: EDIT CHARACTER (available in animation mode only) Allows the editing of a mistyped animation entry. This command exists because simply overwriting an incorrect character does not delete it. In animation mode, both entries are remembered - the incorrect character, plus the wanted one. Upon redisplaying the animation sequence (see ALT-Q), both characters would be seen (the former for only a millisecond perhaps, but it would appear). The ALT-Z command could be used to delete just the incorrect entry. The wanted character could then be entered. This will indeed work perfectly well, and some people may prefer using this method; however, to quickly change the entry ALT-W is more convenient. After pressing Alt-W you are prompted to type a new character. The current position will be flickering. All color changing commands are available (ALT-A and the Ctrl-Arrow keys) while editing. ALT-X: EXIT THEDRAW Prompts if you wish to exit TheDraw or execute a shell to DOS. Responding Yes exits the program. No cancels the command. Shell also exits to Dos, however TheDraw remains in memory. All screen page layers and animation entries are retained. Typing the command "EXIT" at the Dos prompt will return control to TheDraw. ALT-Y: DELETE CURRENT LINE Deletes the current line on the screen. All lines below the current line are shifted up one position. The bottom line is cleared using spaces and the default background color. This command is not reversible, so use it carefully. ALT-Z: ERASE CURSOR CHARACTER (available in animation mode only) Erases the top-most character from the animation sequence at the current cursor position. Only the last character typed at the cursor position is deleted, everything typed before is unchanged. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 44 ALT-= TOGGLE MACRO LEARN MODE (registered version only) Activates the macro learning mode of TheDrawR. You are prompted for which macro key to program (0-9). After specifying the macro, TheDraw remembers everything you type. This is somewhat akin to animation mode; however, macro learn mode literally remembers everything. All editing commands performed, any characters typed, etc... Up to 512 characters will be recorded. Once satisfied with the macro, type ALT-= again to save the macro. To use the macro, press ALT followed by a number key 0 through 9 (NOT the ones on the keypad). ALTERNATE COLOR CHANGE OPTIONS For the experienced user, TheDraw provides a more convenient way of adjusting the current status line colors. Pressing Ctrl-Up increments the current foreground color number (found in ALT-A) and Ctrl-Down decrements it. These two key combinations do not always work reliably on all computers (a Bios flaw exists). To get around this, TheDraw incorporates a special keyboard driver to handle these two keys. If they do not work on your machine run the SETUP utility and use "Keyboard Customize" to configure TheDraw to your keyboard. Pressing Ctrl-Right increments the current background color number; Ctrl-Left decrements it. These keys appear to work properly on all computers. SHIFT-SPACE: SOLID SPACE CHARACTER As stated elsewhere in this documentation, the sprite mode of TheDraw makes other page layers appear through "black spaces" on the current page layer. This can sometimes be convenient and sometimes not. There are instances when you want to have a non-transparent black space on the screen. The Solid Space performs this function (non-transparent black space). Moving the cursor onto a solid space will cause the background color to flicker as an indicator. A Solid space is nothing more than a character #255 (which is a blank IBM extended character). TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 45 CTRL-PRTSC: FULL SCREEN MODE TOGGLE This command toggles screen usage in TheDraw between 23 lines (regular) and 25 lines (full-screen). In full-Screen mode the status line disappears so you can fully use the screen. TheDraw also makes heavy use of pop up windows for prompts and messages in this mode. While useful, it can be awkward since YOU must remember where you are at all times. For instance, block marking and etc... It is easy to become confused unless you are careful. If all else fails, hit ESC a few times to abort the current command. Some people may prefer this mode which is fine. Nothing forces you to use either screen size for anything. Ctrl-PrtSc only operates from command mode. It is not available under any sub commands (such as Block, Global, etc...). There are no restrictions on full screen use in animation modes. Currently if you attempt to save an Ansi file under full screen mode, TheDraw will state line 25 (bottom-most line) will not be saved. This is because a linefeed can cause unwanted linefeeds. This problem will be circumvented in version 3.1 of TheDraw. TheDraw v3.00 TheDraw Command Functions 46 THE ANIMATION SYSTEM ____________________ WHAT IS ANSI ANIMATION? ______________________________________________________________________ The animation system of TheDraw allows the user to create screens with movement, adding excitement to your presentations. In animation mode, TheDraw stores every keystroke typed while designing your screens. This creates what is called the animation sequence. When the animation sequence is displayed, those keystrokes typed in are repeated in the same order entered. Animation sequences can be saved in two different formats: ANSI and THEDRAW. A sequence saved in ANSI can be displayed using the Dos TYPE command on any computer with the ANSI.SYS driver installed (see Appendix A on how to install Ansi.Sys). TheDraw is not needed to display Ansi files once created. The THEDRAW format is used for quickly saving and loading animation sequences to disk. For an example of Ansi Animation, enter "TYPE SHUTTLE.ANS" from the Dos prompt (once the Ansi.Sys driver is installed). ANIMATION BASICS ______________________________________________________________________ The actual "animation" of a screen display is done manually. In other words, the moving object is moved in steps. For each step, the object must first be erased then redrawn moved over slightly. For an example, imagine an asterisk in the center of the screen. We wish to have this asterisk move to the right. To do this, first we put a space over the existing asterisk (thus erasing it), then display a new asterisk over to the right (redrawing it). Repeating this will "animate" the asterisk, since it will appear to move. The above is actually quite easy if you use sprite editing and block copies. Problems start developing however when the object gets larger. The larger the object, the longer it takes to erase and then redraw it. This increased movement time is quite noticeable in ANSI files in particular. All is not lost however, since we can take advantage of certain characteristics found in animated movement. Most animation involves only shifting an object slightly per step. In general, the size of this shift will be smaller than the actual size of the object. TheDraw v3.00 The Animation System 47 Therefore, by redrawing the object we overwrite a good portion of the existing object currently on the screen. Since we are overwriting parts of the existing copy, there is no need to erase those parts! The only portion that does need erasing is the area not overwritten. This will normally be only one or two columns of characters. HOW TO ANIMATE SOMETHING ______________________________________________________________________ Knowing the above details about animation movement makes "animating" an object quite simple using TheDraw. All of the above movement operations (erase then redraw) can be accomplished by using a block copy. The block defined should include the object to move (naturally), plus a line of blank spaces on the side of the block opposite to the direction of movement. The line of spaces acts to erase the trailing characters as the object moves. The object is redrawn, and the existing portion of the object is erased by the line of spaces. Notice that a block copy is used, NOT a block move. A block move physically changes the location of the block. Upon redisplaying the animation sequence, all you see is the block drawn in its new location. No animation is being done. To move the object, use the arrow keys and [S]tamp it in position each time you move. Press [ENTER] when done. Note that pressing [ENTER] will stamp the object one last time. Therefore, you may wish to avoid using the Stamp command on the very last movement of the object. LIMITATIONS ______________________________________________________________________ There are limitations to the animation system. Large objects will have a "ripple" as they move. In addition, they use a significant portion of the available animation space. You will be amazed how quickly 16000 entries can disappear. Objects up to 30x10 characters in size will generally appear without problems. If you have a faster computer, this block size can be increased without too much additional ripple. As will all programs, experience will tell you what is best for a given situation. TheDraw v3.00 The Animation System 48 THE PRESENTATION PROGRAM ________________________ The Presentation Program (THEPP) included with the registered version of TheDraw is a command line driven utility intended to simplify displays and demonstrations. It is flexibly and easy to use. THEPP can display any file loadable by TheDraw (Ansi, Ascii, Binary, BSave and TheDraw formats). As with TheDraw, the filename extensions tell THEPP what format a given file is saved in. The following extensions are required: Binary Dump .BIN Basic BSAVE .BSV TheDraw Format .TD Any other file is assumed to be either Ansi or Ascii. TheDraw format files store which page layer was being edited. THEPP displays only this page layer. If sprite mode is turned on, any page layers below the current one will appear also ("under" the current layer). THEPP takes as its parameters a list of filenames to display on the screen. This it will do as fast and efficiently as possible unless otherwise stated (on other words, you will probably want to slow things down a bit). The following options may be interspersed anywhere in the command line, before between or after, any filenames. Options are specified by using a slash following by one of these characters: Character Action p Stops THEPP from displaying any pause messages on the screen. The pauses are still performed, the user is not notified about them however. k Pause for a key from the user. This is useful for placing between files, so you can stop to appreciate what is shown. t<num> Pauses for <num> number of seconds. Valid numbers for <num> are 1 to 255 seconds. ie: t10 will pause for ten seconds. s<num> Animation display speed. This is a slowdown factor identical to the value you enter when using ALT-Q. It is used whenever THEPP displays a Ansi, Ascii, or TheDraw format file. ie: s10 slows down the file display equivalent to an ALT-Q value of 10. TheDraw v3.00 The Presentation Program 49 Character Action (continued) c Clears the screen. THEPP by default does nothing before displaying a file. If you wish to clear the screen before handle use this option. m<x>,<y> Moves the cursor to horizontal position <x> and vertical position <y>. Useful if you want to control where an Ansi or Ascii file will start to appear on the screen, or wish to display a message using the command below. ie: m40,12 moves the cursor to the center of the screen. "text" Displays any message or text between the quotes. The message MUST be terminated by a quote, otherwise THEPP assumes the rest of the command line is a message. This is useful if you wish to display your own "Press any key to continue" style message, etc... Use the "m" option described above to position messages anywhere on the screen. If you do not specify parameters for THEPP, the above options will be displayed in abbreviated form for convenience. Examples of THEPP usage and explanations are given below: THEPP /c/p SHUTTLE.ANS /m34,25 /"Press a key" /k/c Clears the screen, and turns off the display of pause messages. The Ansi text demo file SHUTTLE.ANS is displayed, followed by the message "Press a key" approximately the center of the bottom line. THEPP then waits for key to be pressed before clearing the screen and returning to Dos. THEPP DEMO.TD /c /m38,12 /"BLIP" /p/t10 /m1,20 Displays the current page layer of DEMO.TD, then immediately clears the screen and displays "BLIP" in the middle of the screen. The cursor is then placed at the beginning line 20 and THEPP exits. THEPP SOMEFILE.ASC Displays the contents of the Ascii file SOMEFILE.ASC on the screen. Equivalent to using "TYPE SOMEFILE.ASC". TheDraw v3.00 The Presentation Program 50 APPENDIX A __________ SETTING UP CONFIG.SYS The ANSI driver must be installed to display Ansi color images and Ansi animation files via the Dos TYPE command. This can be done by adding a 'DEVICE=ANSI.SYS' statement to your CONFIG.SYS file. If you do not have a CONFIG.SYS file, you can create one by typing the following in your root directory: COPY CON CONFIG.SYS<enter> DEVICE=ANSI.SYS<enter> ^Z<enter> If you have a CONFIG.SYS file, append the sequence with: EDLIN CONFIG.SYS<enter> #I<enter> DEVICE=ANSI.SYS<enter> ^Z<enter> E<enter> For this to work properly, the ANSI.SYS file must also be in your root directory. There are many other useful statements that can be places in your CONFIG.SYS file. Two wish can dramatically improve the performance of DOS are: BUFFERS=10 FILES=10 Add these as stated above. If you created a new CONFIG.SYS for the DEVICE=ANSI.SYS clause by COPY CON, then append these using the second method. Enjoy! TheDraw v3.00 Appendix A 51 APPENDIX B __________ PROGRAMMERS PROGRAMMING TIPS This section is for individuals interested in using TheDraw to aid in making their programs. Effort was put into TheDraw to make it a convenient utility. Assembler programmers will find ASM format files in standard data byte format, using the DB operator. Asm files can have varying sizes depending upon the APC save mode used. Dimensions and length of the save are displayed at the top of all assembler dumps. If you Crunched the screen, you will have to use the uncruncher routine provided in ASM source code (UNCRUNCH.ASM). Register requirements are documented in the file. APC Ascii files must be read as bytes and saved on the screen as words. This can be achieved using LODSB and STOSW instructions. LODSB loads into AL the character. You store into AH the attributes to display with. STOSW then writes the two bytes onto the screen. An alternate method would be to use the Bios, however that method is considerably slower. A normal 4000 byte dump is the easiest to display, using the REP MOVSB instruction. To display the image, point the ES:DI pair to B800:0000 (for color screens) and DS:SI to the screen in your program. Also load CX with the number of bytes to display (4000). Monochrome screens are based at segment B000. Direct display onto the screen will cause snow on some color videos, so you may want to move the screen a word at a time only when the video is in a vertical retrace. Vertical retrace can be detected at I/O address 3DA by testing bit 3 of that location. Pascal programmers have similar ease with bringing in screens. You can flash the image in a similar fashion to the Asm program using the Move procedure. Define a variable at the absolute address of the screen. ie: type ScreenType = array [0..3999] of Byte; var Screen : ScreenType absolute $B800:0000; The importance of defining such an array will become obvious below. Next do a move similar to: Move(ImageData,Screen,4000); TheDraw v3.00 Appendix B 52 Assuming ImageData is the name of the pascal image dump. This is only for a full screen. To display a screen block is slightly more difficult. We must use a loop and move a line at a time in this case. ie: for X := 1 to Depth do Move (ImageData[(X-1)*Width*2],Screen[X*160+Offset],Width*2); Depth is the number of lines in the block, and width is the number of characters across the block. This moves a line from ImageData to the video at a given Offset one line at a time. The address in ImageData is advanced to the location of the next line in each loop, with the video address advance 160 characters each time (the true width of the video). Turbo Pascal v3.0 users also have another interesting option. You can include a .BIN file into a turbo program and then display it using the above techniques. Define a dummy external procedure using the name of the .BIN file. ie: procedure DummyProc; external 'DEMO.BIN'; begin end; This makes the binary file part of your pascal program. Once the file is compiled, DEMO.BIN no longer needs to be present. Next, you must set a pointer variable to the address of that procedure. ie: (assuming DummyPtr : ^ScreenType); DummyPtr := Ptr(CSeg,Ofs(DummyProc)); The last part is simple. All we have to do now is replace all references in the above examples to ImageData with DummyPtr^. Don't forget the up arrow symbol at the end (otherwise you'll get some interesting results). ie: Move (DummyPtr^,Screen,4000); It can be fun to play around with this concept, all you have to do is be careful with the pointers. Use of crunched files requires use of the UNCRUNCH procedure included with TheDraw. See the file for details on its use. APC Ascii files can be displayed similar to strings and the like. Basic programmers are a little more limited, not because of lack of commands, but lack of speed. Therefore TheDraw creates the BSave files with all addressing information already programmed. All you have to do is type 'BLOAD "filename.BSV"'. The screen segment is automatically set, so you don't have to bother with DEF SEG=etc... However, if you wish to override the display segment default, try the following: 'DEF SEG=&HB800 : BLOAD"filename.BSV",0'. For monochrome video users, replace the B800 with B000. TheDraw v3.00 Appendix B 53 TheDraw allows partial block saves for basic files. These files will always be 80 characters wide. This is a limitation of BLOAD which we all must live with. They can start and end at any line however, so you could load a full screen then just load small block images to update those parts of the screen needing it. Make sure you build the partial-block images in TheDraw in the exact screen location you want them to finally appear. If you save a block starting on line 5, and ending on line 8 that is where Basic will display it. If you have additional ideas for this section, I'd like hear about them! TheDraw v3.00 Appendix B 54 APPENDIX C __________ EXTENDED/SPECIAL CHARACTER SET The following characters are available in the IBM extended character set. Those included in the TheDraw function key sets are marked with an asterisk (*). Code Symbol Code Symbol Code Symbol Code Symbol 128 Ç 160 á *192 └ 224 α 129 ü 161 í *193 ┴ 225 ß 130 é 162 ó *194 ┬ 226 Γ 131 â 163 ú *195 ├ *227 π 132 ä 164 ñ *196 ─ *228 Σ 133 à 165 Ñ *197 ┼ 229 σ 134 å 166 ª *198 ╞ 230 µ 135 ç 167 º *199 ╟ 231 τ 136 ê 168 ¿ *200 ╚ *232 Φ 137 ë *169 ⌐ *201 ╔ *233 Θ 138 è *170 ¬ *202 ╩ *234 Ω 139 ï *171 ½ *203 ╦ 235 δ 140 î *172 ¼ *204 ╠ 236 ∞ 141 ì 173 ¡ *205 ═ 237 φ 142 Ä *174 « *206 ╬ 238 ε 143 Å *175 » *207 ╧ *239 ∩ 144 É *176 ░ *208 ╨ *240 ≡ 145 æ *177 ▒ *209 ╤ *241 ± 146 Æ *178 ▓ *210 ╥ *242 ≥ 147 ô *179 │ *211 ╙ *243 ≤ 148 ö *180 ┤ *212 ╘ *244 ⌠ 149 ò *181 ╡ *213 ╒ *245 ⌡ 150 û *182 ╢ *214 ╓ *246 ÷ 151 ù *183 ╖ *215 ╫ 247 ≈ 152 ÿ *184 ╕ *216 ╪ *248 ° *153 Ö *185 ╣ *217 ┘ 249 ∙ 154 Ü *186 ║ *218 ┌ *250 · *155 ¢ *187 ╗ *219 █ *251 √ *156 £ *188 ╝ *220 ▄ *252 ⁿ *157 ¥ *189 ╜ *221 ▌ *253 ² 158 ₧ *190 ╛ *222 ▐ *254 ■ 159 ƒ *191 ┐ *223 ▀ *255 TheDraw v3.00 Appendix C 55 T H E F U T U R E Look for these features in version 3.1 of TheDraw: Ability to creating ANSI files that have text on line 25. Mouse interface Send in your ideas, suggestions, criticisms and bug reports. Report something first and be immortalized in the docs of TheDraw! TheDraw v3.00 56 C O M M E N T S Please consider registering for the donation of $15. Quality software at good prices is very difficult to find. We at TheSoft Programming Services firmly believe in and support the concept of shareware products, and hopefully you do also. Please make any checks out to TheSoft Programming Services. If you have any requests, comments or suggestions for TheDraw, please send them to: TheSoft Programming Services c/o Ian Davis - TheDraw 1929 Whitecliff Court Walnut Creek, Ca, 94596. Thanks for your support! TheDraw v3.00 57