Block Graphics Editor - BGE for short V1.0 released 11-16-88 For you SYSOPs out there, I hope this becomes your best little buddy. If you aren't a SYSOP but need a quick and dirty way to edit screens of ANSI block graphics characters (usually known as IBM graphics characters), this may just be your ticket! GETTING OFF THE GROUND: If you are reading this, then you've already got BGE out of the archive and are ready to use it. You'll find several files, and this is what they do: BGE - The program. Put this wherever you like, C: is a good place BGE.INFO - The icon. Put this wherever you like if you desire to run it from the Workbench. NOTE that this is a project icon and you can change the default tool's path if you stash BGE someplace besides your C: directory BGE.DOC - You are reading it. SETFONT - Sets fonts system-wide. Read further for info. Put in C: IBM.FONT - Font header. Put in FONTS: directory 8 - The IBM font. Make a sub-dir in FONTS: called IBM and put this file into FONTS:IBM/ BGE is my idea of a quick and dirty editor to get ANSI block characters into text files, most useful for SYSOPs who like to put borders around things. To my knowlege, there isn't any other easy way to do this but use BGE! Before BGE, I used to cut and paste using TxED, or if I was really desperate, use Transformer and load an IBM program. No more! Limitations of V1.0: There are just a few. Since most users will be interested in designing text screens for BBS systems, it edits ONLY 23 lines by 79 (or fewer) chars. If enough interest is shown, I'll expand this to handle additional lines. BGE will not currently allow you to enter ANSI sequences - it is simply a monochrome editor. At this time you must still use TxED or any other editor you like to add sequences for color, cursor movement, etc., though V2.0 of BGE will incorporate ANSI editing. Features of V1.0: Allows the direct keyboard entry of ANSI border characters using a reference chart within a moveable window. When BGE comes up, it makes this reference chart and places it in a window behind the edit window. You can pop the chart to the front using the typical front-to-back gadgetry and then slide it up and down or pop it back out of the way. Another feature is BGE's ability to strip ANSI escape sequences out of any files you may already have. Eat ANSI is enabled when BGE is first run and can be turned off via a pull-down menu. Once stripped, they are gone for all eternity and have to be re-entered using some other editor (at this time, anyway. See below for future planned updates). It isn't always obvious or easy to edit login and bulletin screens using other editors because you end up working in a "virtual line" environment. Not so with BGE. This is truly WYSIWYG in that if you can't see it, it isn't there! Both character insertion and delete (plus backspace) is toggleable so you don't end up moving your boxes around when you need to fix something either inside or outside a box. Ever try to move a square box of characters around using TxEd (or, heaven forbit, ED)? Can't really be done. BGE allows you to specify corners of an imaginary (or real) box, then cut and paste them to other areas. Likewise, a single vertical or horizontal row or column of characters can be treated the same way. That same defined area can be cut out of your document. Like to center things? No problem. Centering is handled hassle-free, and as a bonus you can specify the length of line you'd like to center to (this is independent of the line length you are editing!). You can easily make two or more centered columns of text using combinations of commands! You can also extract a box of text and graphics from one file and paste them into a new or other file (V1.1 or 1.2 *may* offer switchable edit screens, so you can edit several pages at once and move text between them - this depends on the support given to the SHAREWARE concept :-) of BGE). Entry of text or border characters is accomplished by toggling Block Chars on and off either in a pull-down or by using the ESC key - your choice. Refer to the reference chart. You'll see areas devoted to unshifted keys, shift keys and numeral keys. I've tried to arrange the characters so that using the shift key won't be required often. The user interface should feel quite standard to most folks - Open to load in an existing file, Save As to store it (Save coming soon, though it seems frivolous), New to initialize the editor, etc. Sorry, no fancy files list to point and click on (maybe in the future!). TO USE: Install the various files in this archive according to the directions supplied above. Somewhere, in a startup-sequence file or other handy place you need to set the Amiga to use the IBM.FONT (chances are good that you already have it on your disk, but I supplied one just in case). NOTE that SETFONT is not the same as SETFONT2, while both are from the same author. SETFONT's syntax isn't the same, either. From a CLI prompt prior to using BGE or from your startup- sequence, enter: SETFONT IBM.FONT Notice that no point size is given! Also notice that the ENTIRE font header filename is used! All new tasks will begin using the IBM font instead of whatever you were using prior (usually Topaz from Kickstart). You may find that the IBM font is easier on the eyes and desire to use this all the time (I do) and find it convenient to place in your startup-sequence. NOTE that the IBM font supplied is a cleaned-up font, free of the serifs that the usual IBM font and Topaz posess. Failure to use SETFONT will result in not being able to edit the ANSI border characters - you will be able to edit the funky Amiga international chars instead. Whoopee :-). To make life more convenient, you might want to CD to the directory with the files you want to edit (or create). All that is left is to: RUN BGE or simply BGE at the next CLI prompt. Workbench users who have used SETFONT in their startup-sequence may simply click on BGE's icon if desired. BGE will come up on its own screen. Use LEFT AMIGA-N to pop out of BGE back to Workbench or the CLI. The custom screen was put there to allow a bit of color to spice the program up and make it easier to add ANSI editing down the road. Two windows will open, the first having the block graphics reference chart, the second the actual edit window. You can pop the chart to the top if you wish, and pop it back underneath when you don't need it. From here, things are fairly self-explanatory. In the Functions menu you will find several toggleable switches. Eat ANSI, Eat Delete and Eat Insert always come up turned on. Turn them off if desired or required. Set Line Length and Set Center Width bring up string requestors so that you may, on the fly, change those settings. Please note that if you happen to be editing a 78 column-wide file (default, and just right for BBS-PC) and reset the line length to something less than 78, everything past your new right margin will be promptly eaten. Undo won't bring it back. Centering width is normally set to 80 columns so things look right on the user's terminal. You can change it to fewer or more columns (up to 160 if my memory is behaving) to get some interesting effects. Also in Functions you'll find two items for drawing boxes - truly the lazy man's way of putting borders on something. Specify upper left and lower right corners using items in the Edit menu, then select one of the box drawing items and BGE will draw a complete box for you. Box One is a single line box, and Box Two is double lines. You can draw those boxes around existing text if you like. The Edit menu is full of items you might expect to see. To Delete a line, place the cursor on the line you wish to remove and select Delete. All text below that line will move up. If you wish to insert a line, put the cursor on the line you want to insert before and select Insert. To center a line automatically, put the cursor on the line (anywhere) and select Center. Rather than using the mouse exclusively to highlight a box of text, move to the upper left corner with the cursor and select Mark UL. Move to the lower right and select Mark LR. The text will become highlighted for a moment then copy into a special holding area. If you want to remove the text that was highlighted, then choose Cut from the Edit menu. If you want to stamp it down after you've cut it, position the cursor on the upper left hand corner of where you'd like it and select Paste. Cutting IS NOT necessary before Pasting so you can simply duplicate boxes of text or graphics anywhere you'd like after you have marked them. Undo is pretty self explanatory. It won't cover all of your mistakes, but the major ones can be undone. BGE is a memory hog. I'll admit it. The reason is simple - BGE is written in compiled AmigaBasic! The runtime library consumes 44K of its current large size. Much of the remaining memory is used strictly for the Amiga-ized user interface. Fortunately, enhancements won't cause it to grow appreciably (wish me luck!). This program is SHAREWARE. Your use of BGE is encouraged, of course, and your support of my work (I have quite a bit of time invested!) WILL BE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED! To further development of Amiga programs, including BGE, I need to invest more money in my hardware and software and your support of BGE will allow me to support you in the future! I'm asking a mere $10 for registering all versions up through V1.99 (bugs fixed). When you consider the convenience of using BGE, I'm sure (pretty sure) you'll agree that it's worth $10. That $10 will motivate me to go further with it. Of course, if you send more I won't refuse it, and if you send less I'll understand. The main thing is to show support for the concept of shareware and to encourage me and other authors to continue to produce useful utilities, games, applications, etc! If you send your contribution to me in a disk mailer along with a disk and postage back, I'll send you the most current version, along with other useful utilities that I've come across and think you may find convenient to have around. :-) If you'd like to diddle with the code on your own (no warrantees either expressed or implied), I'll supply that to you for an additional $5. Should BGE find its way into a multi-user, multi-computer environment (such as a school or government agency [unlikely as that seems]), I ask that all copies be registered individually (10 computers = 10 SHAREWARE registrations) though I don't expect all copies to be registered for the full $10). SHAREWARE contributions and registrations can be made to Steve Lewis, PO Box 30441, Phoenix, AZ, 85046. Check, money orders or even cash (wrap the cash in a piece of paper to keep nosey (greedy) postmen from pilfering it) is perfectly fine. Please avoid sending coin, as the postage on your end will go up quite a bit ;-). If you need to contact me, I can be reached on GEnie as S.LEWIS or phone via modem the Amyholics BBS at (602) 843-8486 and look for me under my regular name. An alternative BBS to seek me out on is Amy Adviser at (602) 582-5174. Both of these boards are 24 hours, 9600/2400/1200/300. The former is PC Pursuit-able. In any case, I retain all rights and copyright to BGE, in both compiled and source form. I am releasing it as (C) SHAREWARE. It may be freely distributed by any means so long as the distributor allows redistribution of it. It may be included with public domain software distributed by not-for-direct-profit means (such as user group disks or disks furnished to purchasers at computer stores so long as the cost of copying the master disk does not exceed $5) so long as this doc file is included in unedited form and is easily accessed by the disk purchaser. Arrangements can be made for commercial distribution (such as for-profit "disks of the month" subscription services - please contact me to inquire. Without prior written consent, this program shall not be included on any commercially distributed public domain or shareware disk costing in excess of $5 for the user to obtain. {Pardon this, but I have to speak my mind... Any network that is naive enough to think that either PD or SHAREWARE, which is uploaded by users to distribute to other users via its databases, becomes their property to the point of restricting its further distribution should have its modems disconnected and its hard disk drive platters cleaned with steel wool. Thank you for your time...} FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS: The future of BGE lies with YOU, the user of it. Right now it suits my needs (not desires) and the time commitment to enhance it to what I'd like it to become will be significant. Your support of BGE will be both appreciated and motivating. I'd like BGE to evolve into an editor which will handle all sorts of text files which have unusual requirements - mainly those requiring the editing of ANSI block graphics and ANSI color and character attributes. Truly, I'd like to be able to quit using TxED in the daily chores of running a BBS! V2.x, if I receive enough monetary support, will include the ability to edit ANSI sequences into the text. With much luck and labor on my part, I hope to be able to eliminate almost all of the painstaking sequence entry, making it easy for anyone to create colorful ANSI graphics screens for BBS display or regular text files. I think I should add that I'm indebted to Compute's Advanced AmigaBASIC book for providing valuable information and very handy subroutines to handle the user interface. If there was ever a Compute book that warranted purchase, this is probably the one. I hope you find BGE useful! I'll be looking forward to your correspondence and SHAREWARE donation! Maybe you'll find BGE rewritten in C someday :-) - - - PS - There's a great Amiga BBS in Phoenix called Amiga City that supports ANSI like nobody else. Check it out at (602) 395-9978! 2400/1200/300, 24 hours. I can also be found hanging out there if you need to get in touch.