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- ╔══════════╗
- ║ PCGRA ║
- ╚══════════╝
-
- PCGRA was written by and is Copyright Nigel Salt 1991.
-
- It is not freeware. It is shareware. If you do decide to keep
- it you should send £10 ($25 outside UK) to me at the address
- shown at the end of this document. Please do consider this as I
- am desperately in need of a replacement computer. You have no
- idea how long PCGRA takes to compile on the one I currently
- have.
-
- Until you register all the fonts that you save will have
- "Copyright Nigel Salt" in the last 32 characters. When you
- register I will send you a version without this "feature".
-
- PCGRA is a font editor. It can be used to edit any 8 by 16 bit
- font which includes the EGA text fonts and the VGA (640x480)
- graphic mode fonts. It runs ONLY on machines that support
- 640x480 16 colour mode.
-
- When you load PCGRA you see a bit map grid on the left and two
- text boxes on the right. Above the text boxes is the dialogue
- box. The lower text box contains the font to be edited. The
- upper text box initially contains a copy of the same font.
-
- If you look at the dialogue box it has the EDIT TEXT BOX HELP
- in it. As you can see your options are save the current font,
- load a new one, exit or move around the box. Try moving around
- a bit then hit Enter and you will see the bit map of the
- characters that are currently under the cursor appear in the
- left hand grid. You can try loading a new font now if you like.
- The ones supplied are "gothic.fnt", "normal.fnt", and
- "blank.fnt". If you choose to save the current font then it
- is written to disc in the order necessary to reload the EGA
- font table ie Characters in ASCII sequence and 16 bytes for
- each character starting at the top.
-
- If you press Tab a blue cursor will appear in the top text box.
- You can load a different font in this box and copy any 9
- characters to the bottom box at the current cursor position.
-
- If you press Tab again you will see a small flashing cursor at
- the top right of the grid. If you press Ins then the bit under
- the cursor is set and, if you look very carefully, you will see
- that the corresponding bit in the lower text box is also set.
- Pressing Del resets the bit under the cursor. Tab takes you
- back to the lower text box so that you can select some new
- characters for editing.
-
- If you press F3 the cursor colour changes to green. When you
- move it expands to enclose a block and the help text changes to
- tell you about block options. There are many different options
- and I suggest that you try them out. Note that you can only
- rotate a square block.
-
- If you press the copy or move keys then the cursor will change
- colour again. You can enlarge or shrink copies of the original
- block as described in the dialogue box. Press Enter to make the
- copy.
-
- Finally you can save a block. Blocks can be saved to disc in
- binary or text format. Text with leading 0xs or trailing hs can
- be specified. You can save the block in two ways. Firstly the
- Microsoft C "image" format which can be reloaded using the
- Microsoft C _getimage() function. Secondly as a pixel by pixel
- image. In this case the left boundary of the object is treated
- as a byte boundary and trailing 0s are used to pad out the last
- byte on each line if necessary. Bytes are saved left to right
- and top to bottom
-
- I have provided two other programs, "settfont fontname" loads a
- font in EGA / VGA text mode, "setgfont fontname" loads a font
- in VGA 640x480 graphics mode. If you mess up your fonts and
- cannot see what is going on on the screen then just type blind
- "mode co80" and press Enter.
-
- Well that's the lot - have fun!
-
-
- Send registration / comments to
- Nigel Salt
- 25 Lower Station Road
- Crayford
- Kent
- DA1 3PY
- England.
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