Introduction ------------ This chapter describes what RIPscrip is and gives a little information on how to use it in your menus. What is RIPscrip ---------------- RIPscrip (Remote Imaging Protocol Script Language) is a Graphical Script Language with wich you can produce all kind of graphical effects in your menus and even use Mouse Buttons or Mouse Areas to controll your BBS. RIPscrip is a set of codes .. a bit like the ANSI codes in normall BBS screens .. but with RIPscrip you can do a lot more then only drawing screens. You can draw pixels, lines, circles, arcs bezier curves. You can floodfill parts of the screen. You can use 16 colors from a palette of 64 (more in newer RIP versions). You can change and define line and fill styles. Use different fonts in a lot of sizes (not suported locally at this moment). You can copy pieces of the screen and put them somewhere else or load and save pieces from the screen to disk. Or load pictures from disk to the screen. You can use mouse buttons or mouse fields to make a screen clickable. RIPscrip is a lot more complicated then ANSI, it is almost impossible to make screens by hand. You need a special editor to "draw" your screens. The Trion BBS system can display RIPscrip codes locally (up to version 1.54 of RIPscrip). Note that some one who logs in over a serial port needs a terminal program with RIPscrip capabilities or else his display will be filled with unreadable codes. How to use in menus ------------------- Note that you have to enable RIPscrip processing with an ANSI-code or the RIP commands will be shown as normal text. ESC[1! Disables all RIPscrip processing. Any RIPscrip sequences are interpreted as raw text. ESC[2! Enabled RIPscrip processing. Any RIPscrip sequences will be parsed and processed. Folowing is an menu example to show a single RIP screen: Cmd "1" , 0-255 Print "esc[2!|" PrintFile "trion:text/tower.rip" More Print "esc[1!|" EndCmd (Replace 'esc' with the ANSI escape code) If you want to control a part of your BBS with RIPscrip screens you only switch back to ANSI after the last screen because after the last code the mouse clicks on RIP icons don't work, and the colors are switched back to ANSI colors. (RIPscrip uses the EGA color system with 16 colors from a palette from 64 colors, which differ from the ANSI colors) Also note that RIPscrip on PC's use a screen of 640 x 350 pixels (80 x 43) characters. So if you want to use the entire RIPscreen you have to use the Interlaced mode, if you don't need the bottom 94 pixels you can use the non-Interlaced mode. Added a menu flag "NOSCREEN" , if you put this after flags in the first part of the menu (where hotkeyable is) then the menu screen will not be printed. This is usefull if there is no menu screen file, because with this flag you don't get a warning that there is no screen. This flag is meant for use with FX (effects) doors that can build a screen on there own. Flags should be separated with a comma !! For instance: flags hotkeyable, noscreen Or: FLAGS NOSCREEN Included a RIPscrip BBS graphics test door. I used this to debug RIP code, and to write a functions to use RIP codes in doors. This door is a good example of some things that are possible with RIPscrip, for the people who want to experiment with it, the source is included. With this in your menu you can view it. Cmd "T" , 0-255 CliDoor "trion:utils/riptest" EndCmd RIP menus.. It is now possible to make a menu set the is for a great part controlled with a mouse. This is basically a demo to demonstrate just that. The problem with RIP is that you have to give an ANSI code to switch it on and off, because if you have it on the ANSI colors don't work, and if you turn it off the mouse button definitions are gone. You can make a normal menu set with RIP screens instead of the ANSI screens but you have to place print menu commands to switch on/off the RIP mode all over the place. (see BBS.doc for info about this. So what you basically want is an FX type of door that switches RIP on when the screen is build and switch RIP off after the input of a user. That is what I have done .. I made an FX door that can produce a screen with icons for every menu. And because it is an FX door, it has a little graphicall effect in it when it waits for input. On my BBS I made a copy of the menuset especially for RIP so it can be viewed with ANSI or RIP. When you arrive in the start menu you can go to the "normal" menu with return but with R you end up in the RIP menu set. (RIP menuset, Door and source of door is included) The new menuset is named like this: xxxxxxxxxx.src -> xxxxxxxx_rip.src In all RIP menus I added the "NOSCREEN" flag, because it doesn't needs an ANSI file just the RipDoor FX door. But when you've made a screen yourself you can remove the NOSCREEN flag and use a normal file for a screen. Or when you know a little C you can change the door yourself. Added this to every RIP menu: BuildScreen CliDoor "trion:utils/ripdoor ~50 0" EndCmd You have to replace the Zero with a different number for each menu like this: main menu 0 file menu 1 Mail menu 2 Bulletin menu 3 Door menu 4 Logout menu 5 Sysop menu 6 User edit menu 7 test menu 8 Browse menu 10 List menu 11 Download menu 12 Read msgs menu 13 Scan msgs menu 14 Editor menu 15