Amiga Plus Extra 1997 #2

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ANSI Master 1.0 By James Davis and Joe Rattz, Jr. Copyright 1990 by Prism SoftWorks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ANSI Master is released as shareware. Feel free to distribute the program, but this doc file must be included. If you find this program useful, please send in the $10 U.S. registration fee along with any recommendations or bug reports to: James Davis 129 Dixon Avenue Sumter, SC 29153 DISCLAIMER: ANSI Master and this documentation file are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Further, Prism SoftWorks does not warrant, guarantee, or make any representations regarding the use, or the results of use, of ANSI Master or this documentation file in terms of correctness or otherwise. All risks due to the performance or results of the use of ANSI Master and this documentation are assumed by you. All references to IBM are referring to IBM compatible computers, those that use MS-Dos or PC-Dos as their primary operating system, and not to IBM corporation. Credits: ANSI Master is the joint effort of James Davis and Joe Rattz, Jr. It was designed due to the lack of a good ANSI editor for the Amiga. Our definition of good would be based on 4 criteria. First, and probably most important, does the ANSI editor use the IBM font, it can't possibly emulate IBM ANSI correctly if it doesn't. Second, does it provide the proper number of possible colors, 16 foreground and 8 background. Third, does it imbed the proper ANSI codes into the created ANSI file. And, fourth, does the program provide a way to access the line drawing characters that exist in the IBM font. We would also like to thank the many people who have helped us test our program before distribution. Thanks to ARP for the arp.library requester. Thanks to HiSoft for HiSoft Basic Professional. And, finally thanks to Commodore for the Amiga, the best personal computer available, it can even do a white background! Documentation by Joe Rattz, Jr. If you would like to reach us quickly, or if you want to call anyway, call: The Depot Connection (803) 775-2080 300/1200/2400/9600 Sumter, SC If you call, you can reach the Amiga section by going into the Main Menu(M), Bulletin Boards(B), the Computer Users Area(4), Amiga(1). ============================================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Installation A. Contents B. Libraries C. Font 2. Usage 3. Interface A. Keyboard 1. Text Keys 2. Function Keys 3. Other Special Purpose Keys B. Gadgets 1. System Gadgets 2. ASCII Character Gadgets 3. Function Gadgets C. Menus 1. New Document 2. Open Document 3. Save Document 4. Save As... 5. Help 6. About ANSI Master 7. Exit ANSI Master 4. IBM, AMIGA, and ANSI 5. Limitations and Our Interpretations of ANSI 6. Errors A. arp.library missing. B. diskfont.library missing. C. IBM.Font/8 missing. D. Insufficient Memory. E. ANSI Master 1.0 Error (internal) ============================================================================== 1. Installation: ANSI Master requires a few minutes of installation time. The installation is very simple, and only requires a couple of files to be copied. Please take the time to install ANSI Master properly, as it will not load without installation. If you try to load ANSI Master without first installing it, the program will provide an error message window on your Workbench screen, telling you what is missing or wrong. ANSI Master is shareware, and thus it is not copy protected, so if you run into trouble, it is not due to copy protection. A. Contents: ANSI Master is distributed with the following files: ANSIMaster - the actual program file ANSIMaster.info - the icon for ANSI Master ANSIMaster.doc - this doc file ANSIMaster.doc.info - icon for this doc file Example.ANSI - a sample ANSI document arp.library - for the requester IBM.font - IBM font with line drawing characters IBM - subdirectory with the file "8" in it 8 - IBM font file in the IBM subdirectory B. Libraries: The following libraries need to be copied to the libs: subdirectory of your bootdisk: arp.library If you are missing the arp.library from the libs: subdirectory when ANSI Master is loading, you will get an error window on your Workbench screen. You MAY also get an error message if you are missing other library files that are standard on Workbench. C. Font: ANSI Master requires the IBM font be on the bootdisk in the fonts subdirectory. Copy the IBM.font file and the IBM subdirectory into the fonts subdirectory. It is important that you not change the name of the font or ANSI Master will not find it. If ANSI Master fails to find this font on the bootdisk (or any fonts subdirectory overriding it, like fonts:), it will give an error window on the Workbench screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Usage: ANSI Master was designed for the purpose of creating and editing ANSI Messages. If you operate a BBS or use a BBS that supports ANSI codes, ANSI Master is ideal for creating displays and possibly menus if the program will allow ANSI menus. Since, there are a few features we are using that I have not seen in other programs, I will take the time to explain them here. F1: In the bottom right hand corner of the screen, is a sunken box labeled F1. In this box you will see whatever ANSI character you last selected with the mouse. Not only will you see the character, you will see it displayed in whatever foreground and background color are currently selected. Change the foreground or background color, and the F1 box character changes color. This is displayed here to let you know that it is the character you will get if you press the F1 key. Since we are showing color changes in it, you can determine what the character will look like when you change the color, without printing the character to the screen. When you push the F1 key, this character will be printed to the screen. This feature was added to enable the user to make repetitive graphic characters more easily. Since gadgets do not auto-repeat, they must be clicked one time for each character to be printed. The F1 key allows the user to automatically repeat the graphic character by holding it down just like any normal text key. The F1 character displayed in the F1 Box may occasionally look irregular with some colors due to some monitor's distortion at this extreme corner of the screen. F2: This key copies the line above the current line to the current line. This is done for the purpose of making a box. When you make a box, all of the lines are alike except for the top and bottom ones. To simplify making a box, make the top line, then make the next line, then copy that line to the next line, repeat this for as many lines as you wish, then do the bottom line, then you add your text to the box. Remember, this copies the line above the current line to the current line, don't accidentally destroy a line by copying the line above the current line when you meant to copy the current line to the next lower line. R: At the far right side of the control panel is a sunken area labeled R:. This area displays the current row. C: Below the Row indicator, at the right side, is the Column indicator sunken and labeled C:. FG and BG: At the far left bottom corner of the control panel is the FG and BG sunken areas. These are only labels depicting which row of colors pertain to the foreground and background. Example.ANSI: We have provided an example document called Example.ANSI. Try loading this file into ANSI Master to see the types of files and menus you can create. If your BBS program allows you to provide your own ANSI BBS menus, you can really snazzy-up your BBS with ANSI Master. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Interface: 3.A. Keyboard: 1. Text Keys: All of the normal text keys work as you would expect. Typing from the keyboard places the characters you type into the document. Holding down a key will make that character automatically repeat. Repeat speed is determined by preferences. If your preferences speed is all the way up, and it is going too slow for you, try lowering the repeat speed in preferences. We have found that if this speed is set too high, it will actually overspeed the program, and slow you down. 2. Function Keys: F1: This key will repeat the last ASCII character gadget selected. It will automatically repeat like most keys on the keyboard, allowing the user to make many repetitive characters with just one long keypress. This is useful for drawing horizontal lines. You can determine what character will print by looking at the F1 box in the bottom right corner of the control panel. F2: This key will copy the row above the current row to the current row. This is useful for creating boxes. Other than the top and bottom row, the other rows are alike except for text. To make a box of several rows tall, make the top line, then the next "middle type" line. Chances are you will want to duplicate this line to make the box taller. Go down one row and push F2, and the line you just drew will be copied. Do this as many times as you want "middle type" lines, then do the bottom line, and finally, go back and add text. F3: This key will insert a null character in the current cursor position. All characters from the cursor position to the right will be moved one character right. This will not wrap to the next line, and the character in column 79 will be erased from the document. After you have inserted a null, you will usually want to space over it to fill it in with a character value and color values. Again, remember, this is an ANSI graphic editor, not a text editor, it will not wrap to the next line, and the character at position 79 of the current row will be erased. F4: This key will duplicate the Page Down gadget, which moves the document down one page (13 lines) at a time. F5: This key duplicates the Page Up gadget and moves the document up one page at a time. Notice that the Page Up function key (F5) is above the 6 key which has the "^" character pointing up. This is intentional to help the user remember which key (F4 or F5) is Page Up. F6: This Key duplicates the Save Document command from the menu. It saves to the path and filename if the file has been saved previously. If the file has not been saved previously, the ARP file requester will appear. If the filename exists in the path already specified, a requester pops up asking if the user wishes to overwrite the existing file. F7: This duplicates the Save As command in the menu. It will bring up the ARP file requester and warn if the file is going to overwrite an existing file. F8: This duplicates the Open Document in the menu. It will bring up the ARP file requester. If the current document has been changed since it was last saved, a requester will appear giving you the chance to abort the Open and to save the current document. If you have a current document and you try to open a new one, the old document will not be cleared until you have specified a valid file to load. So, if you accidentally open a new document, and you unintentionally bypass the FILE NOT SAVED warning, your file will still be there if you hit cancel on the file requester. F9: This brings up the help requester which shows all of the function keys. The Help key also does this. Click the mouse, or hit a key to close the requester. F10: This brings up the about requester and duplicates the About menu item. Click the mouse or hit any key to close the requester. 3. Other Special Purpose Keys: Other keys which you may find useful are: Help - brings up the help window Del - deletes the character the cursor is on and moves all characters on that line to the right of the cursor left one character. This will not delete characters from the row below, nor will it delete an entire line if the line is blank. Cursor keys - these keys move you through the document just as you might expect. When you reach Column 79, your cursor will wrap to the next line. Moving left, either with the backspace key or left arrow, will take your cursor up one row and to Column 79. Backspace - puts a null character in the place to the left of the cursor, then moves the cursor to that position. 3.B. Gadgets: The interface control panel consists of three types of gadgets. All gadgets appear as raised boxes while unselected except for the screen to back and selected colors gadgets, which appear sunk. 3.B.1 First are the system gadgets. These are the screen front to back and back to front gadgets located in the top right corner on the control panel. The screen to back gadget is the one on the left and is symbolized by a sunken square which raises when you click on it. The screen to front is symbolized by a raised square which will sink when selected. The screen to back gadget is the only gadget that is sunk in appearance. All other sunk displays are only displays for different data. 3.B.2 The second type of gadgets are the ASCII character gadgets located on the top three rows. There are 51 of these in three rows of 17 across. They are generally for the purpose of drawing lines and boxes. Whenever you select one of these gadgets, the F1 display box, located in the bottom right corner, displays the character in the currently selected foreground and background colors. Pressing F1 will duplicate this character for you. This is useful since you must click the gadget every time you want the character printed, in other words, the ASCII character gadgets will not repeat merely by holding them down. By using F1 once you have clicked on the gadget, you can repeat the character automatically by holding it down just like any other key. If you find it too slow, you may have the key repeat speed set too fast in your preferences. If the preferences speed is set too fast, the program will bog down and actually go slower. 3.B.3 The third type of gadgets are function gadgets. These are gadgets which will produce a certain function. The top two on the left edge are Page Up and Page Down, and are marked with a "P" and an up and down arrow. Along the bottom two rows of gadgets are the foreground and background color selection gadgets. The foreground colors are on top and there are 16 to choose from. The background colors are on the bottom and there are 8 to choose from. Originally, we had intended to provide 16 background colors, but since the IBM ANSI standard has no provision for more than 8, there would be no way to implement them. Believe it or not, I still have a hard time with this one, these 8 colors are the only choices IBM users have for their backgrounds. I still can't get over the fact that they have no provision for a white (hi intensity) background. Of the foreground colors, the 8 on the left are hi intensity, and the ones on the right are lo intensity or faint. If you do not see these same colors when you view a message created by ANSI Master with a modem program, consult the section in this doc file called IBM, AMIGA, and ANSI. The 8 background gadgets are lo intensity only, as this is all ANSI on the IBM supports. When you select a foreground or background color, the change can be detected by either the fact that the newly selected color is sunk or look in the F1 box on the bottom right corner of the panel and you should see the last character selected by gadget, displayed with the new foreground or background color. You should notice on the bottom left of the color gadgets are the letters FG and BG. These sunk areas merely label which row of gadgets is for the foreground colors and which is for background colors. The two remaining gadgets, one on each side of the color gadgets, are color swap gadgets. Originally, when we intended to support 16 colors for foreground and background, there was only one of these gadgets that would swap the foreground and background colors. Well, with the problem of only 8 background colors, comes another gadget. The color swap gadget on the left will swap the foreground color to its root color on the background, and the background color to the hi intensity of its root color for the foreground. The swap gadget on the right will swap the background color to its lo intensity color for the foreground, and the foreground to the root color in the background (huh?). In other words, the swap gadget on the left swaps the background colors with the 8 leftmost foreground colors (hi intensity), and the right swap gadget switches the background color with the 8 rightmost foreground colors (lo intensity or faint). 3.C. Menus: Project New Document Open Document Save Document Save As ... Help About Quit Under the project menu are 7 choices. New Document will warn you if any changes have been made to the current document without saving before it clears the document. If this warning requester comes up, either hit the Yes or No gadget, or hit Y or N on the keyboard. Open document will also warn if the current document has been changed since it was last saved before it clears the current document and loads one in. The Open Document menu choice will call up the ARP requester, thus the ARP Library (Arp.library) is required (see Installation). The requester works as usual with the normal gadgets for parent and selecting files. The drives gadget will list all mounted drives and assigned devices, as will clicking the right mouse button. For more information on the file requester, consult the ARP documentation file, not included with this distribution file. Save Document will save the file directly to the prespecified path if it has been saved already. If the file has not been named, the ARP requester will open, allowing file selection through it. If a file already exists by the name given, a requester will appear requesting whether you want to overwrite it. Save As... brings up the ARP file requester. If a file already exists by the given name, a requester will appear, asking if you wish to overwrite the file. Help will bring up the Help window. Click the mouse or press any key to close the window. About will list the program name, version, release date, authors, registration fee, and address. If you like this program, please register, because the authors plan to use the registration fees to buy a C compiler to produce some more software, possibly even a C version of this program with more user definable options. Quit will exit the program. If the document has been changed since it was last saved, a requester will pop up allowing the user to abort the exit so he can save his file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. IBM, Amiga, and ANSI Supposedly ANSI is a standard, but there are quite a few differences between the IBM and Amiga implementations. This program was designed designed specifically with the IBM implementation in mind. The IBM and Amiga ANSI codes we have verified are as follows: IBM Amiga Attributes - Attributes - 0 ... Reset colors and attributes 0 ... Reset colors and attributes 1 ... Hi intensity foreground 1 ... Bold 2 ... Lo intensity (faint) foreground 3 ... Italics 4 ... Underscore Foreground colors - Foreground colors - 30 ... Black 31 ... Red 32 ... Green 33 ... Yellow 34 ... Blue 35 ... Magenta 36 ... Cyan 37 ... White Background colors - Background colors - 40 ... Black 41 ... Red 42 ... Green 43 ... Yellow 44 ... Blue 45 ... Magenta 46 ... Cyan 47 ... White There are no colors listed for the Amiga because nearly all Amiga programs allow you to change your colors to whatever you want, a luxury that IBM owners don't get. With the Amiga, the ANSI codes can generate whatever the program is setup for. You may want to try using the type command on an ANSI file from CLI, you should see color changes and attributes. It is also important to know that attributes are cumulative. Italics and Underscore codes will give you both, to reset, send a 0 attribute. It is important to note that the attributes, with the exception of reverse video, only affect the foreground color. There are only eight possible background colors, but due to the attributes hi intensity and lo intensity, 16 foreground colors. How you will see messages over the BBS will depend on your terminal program's interpretation of ANSI. If your terminal program supports the Amiga implementation of ANSI, the main difference you will notice is that you will get bold characters instead of hi intensity. You may still be getting hi intensity colors though due to the fact that most Amiga terminal programs allow you to set the palette colors to the colors of your choice. Due to this, the distinction between hi intensity and lo intensity is minimal on the Amiga. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Limitations and Our Interpretation of ANSI ANSI Master requires approximately 400K to run. ANSI Master is limited to documents that are 79 columns wide or less and 50 rows or less. If you attempt to load a file that has more than 79 columns, you will get the following message: FILE TRUNCATED: Column(s) exceeded 79 characters. If you attempt to load a file with more than 50 rows, not counting leading blank rows (), you will get the following message: FILE TRUNCATED: File exceeded 50 rows. These messages are merely letting you know that the file you loaded was larger than allowed and will be truncated if you save your document back to the same filename. Again, when you get this message, the file has NOT actually been truncated, but it WILL be if you save without changing the document's filename. ANSI Master was designed to encompass every useful idea we could incorporate into the program. There were certain decisions however that we had to make regarding what types of files we were expecting to be loading and what we wanted the output files to look like. For example, all of our output files have a first line which is an escape code followed by a left bracket and 0m (). We do this to reset any previously set colors or attributes, thus insuring that the document will display as expected. This will also print a blank line when displayed over a BBS program or terminal program. Since we were putting a blank line at the top of each file, we didn't want to have a blank line at the top of the document when you loaded it back into the editor, so we skip the first line if it is a . And, since you are limited to only 50 rows, we decided not to waste precious rows with leading blank lines, so we decided to skip all leading blank lines (those with ). Remember, it is possible to imbed blank lines merely by putting a space or some other character on that line, thus preserving any leading blank line you wish. ANSI Master will work properly with attributes of 0, 1, and 2, but with other attributes, you may get some unexpected results. Of course, all of the color codes are accepted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. Errors: There are several types of errors you may get while using ANSI Master. The first is an installation error. If you attempt to run ANSI Master without first installing it, you will probably get an error message. The different error messages you may get are: A. arp.library missing. This is caused by arp.library not being in the bootdisk libs: subdirectory. B. diskfont.library missing. This is caused by the diskfont.library not being in the bootdisk libs: subdirectory. C. IBM.Font/8 missing. This message is caused by either the IBM.font file missing, or the IBM/8 file missing. If these files have been copied but renamed, you will still get this message. D. Insufficient Memory. This message is caused by not having enough memory available (400K) to run ANSI Master. If you do not have enough memory to run ANSI Master, try unloading another program, or booting without loading Workbench. E. ANSI Master 1.0 Error (internal) There are also internal errors you may get while actually running ANSI Master. These include: Out of Memory File Not Found Device I/O Error Disk Full Bad File Name Device Unavailable Disk Write Protected Unknown Volume All of these, except for Out of Memory, are disk related errors and are fairly easy to understand. You should not get an Out of Memory error, because we check to see if there is enough available when the program starts up, and then we reserve it. But, since we can't possibly be sure that you won't find some way to defeat our efforts and make it Guru due to lack of memory, we check for it anyway, and hopefully make a graceful exit if the error occurs. It's not that we think you would intentionally try to make it Guru or mess it up, we are just new at this and wanted to be sure. I hope this program never Gurus due to lack of memory. In fact we have done everything we know of (not much) to prevent any Guru from happening! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE END -------------------------------------------------------------------------------