CELLBOSS\CELLBOSS.DOC ·
DOC ·
24.5 KB ·
1990-07-01 ·
from WhatPC_Issue-12_Jul-1990
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(c) logIX January 1990
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CellBoss is a utility which enables you to design 80x25 character-
based screens. It was written for a specific job out of frustration,
as the few programs of this type we'd seen always suffered from one or
more defects - difficult to learn, lacking a particular feature we
wanted, or overpriced!
The perfect program may exist out there, but we decided to create one
suited to our own needs. CellBoss is primarily intended for colour
setups, but those with mono should still be able to use the program.
Screens created with CellBoss on a colour display can be loaded into a
machine with a mono adapter - and vice-versa - and with care they'll
still be legible.
Screens are saved as screen images - a record of what's in the PC's
screen memory. Therefore ANSI.SYS does not need to be installed which,
when you're writing programs to be used by other people, can save a
lot of hassle. It also makes for a very fast screen update rather than
the overly visible process with normal printing.
This version of CellBoss is the first, and has a few rough edges and
areas where improvements could be made. There may even be the odd bug,
though we haven't noticed any. Even in its present form a lot of work
went into CellBoss and it is distributed on a shareware basis: we
invite you to try it out and pass on copies to friends. If you (or
they) find it useful, please register with us and send a fee of £5.
What do you gain by doing so? Firstly, you'll allow us to develop the
program further (suggestions and bug sightings are very welcome) and
write future products at a similarly realistic price. You help ensure
a supply of further cheap software from us and others like us. If the
shareware concept isn't supported by those that benefit most, it will
disappear and we'll all be a lot worse off. Also, we'll send you some
free programs (ah!) to display CellBoss screens in batch files and
from Basic, and help construct menus. The current list is at the
bottom of this file. We'll also mailshot you should a new product or
(likely free) upgrade becomes available.
INSTRUCTIONS
------------
CellBoss is designed to be easy to use but it has plenty of features.
INITIAL INSTALLATION
--------------------
You should have been supplied with the following files:
CELLBOSS.EXE - the main program
CELLBOSS.MNU - the menu screen
CELLBOSS.KEY - function key definitions
CELLBOSS.DOC - this document file. We suggest you print it out.
If any of these are missing, go back to your supplier as you've only
got part of the product. CellBoss is distributed on the strict
understanding that ALL files are passed on in their original form.
Copy the files on to a working disc or into a hard disc directory.
CellBoss loads two files when it boots up, and it expects these to be
in the current drive/directory.
Now just type CELLBOSS and away you go. Please do this now so you can
look at the menu screen and try a few options while reading these
instructions.
EDIT/MENU MODE
--------------
To go from the menu into edit mode, press Esc. Press Esc again to get
back to the menu.
LOADING, SAVING and MULTIPLE SCREENS
------------------------------------
CellBoss can have up to nine screens in memory, which is particularly
useful because you can copy and move blocks between them. This feature
allows you to build up screens of often used designs, parts of which
can then be copied into the screen you're creating.
Most options just operate on the currently selected screen. To change
screens press E and the arrow indicating the current screen will begin
to flash. Either press a number key or use the up and down cursor keys
to change screen. Pressing the right cursor key allows you to give a
name to the screen or change one that's already there. Press Return
when you're on the right screen.
Loading a previously saved screen is simply a matter of pressing L and
entering a filename. This will be loaded into the current frame and
the filename made its name. As mentioned before, CellBoss saves
screens as memory images. If you have a screen saved as text from a
word processor or other editor, the read Ascii option will load it in.
If ANSI.SYS is installed, any Ansi codes will be acted upon thus
providing a conversion facility.
There are two save options. S allows you to save the current frame. If
it has a name, you'll be given the option of using it or giving a
different name. See the note entitled The Line Editor for up to date
information on CellBoss's text input routine. The second save option
is V for saVe all. This saves all nine frames if there's anything in
them. Frames which have been altered but haven't been given a filename
are indicated by a question mark and filenames will be prompted for
these.
INK and PAPER
-------------
Ink refers to the colour of the text, paper to the background. On
colour monitors (CGA, EGA, VGA and so on) there are 16 possible inks
which may be steady or flashing. There are eight possible papers,
which correspond in colour to the first eight inks. To change the
current ink or paper, press I or P and use the left and right cursor
keys to make your selection. Press Return when you have finished.
No special measures are taken to cater for mono monitors, and it is
well that you should understand why. Amstrad PC1512 and PPC (not
PC1640) mono displays show the different colours in shades of grey, so
there's nothing to be gained here.
Mono displays are a different worm jar. If you have a colour setup
running into a monitor with a mono switch, all the papers (with the
exception of black) look the same, which in turn are the same as the
dimmer inks. Bright inks look the same as each other, which is
brighter than the papers.
Our EGA card switched in software to simulate a mono card looks the
same as the above description whatever the monitor is set to do.
However, an antique (more than two years old in the computer world)
Opus of our acquaintance shows most colours as black. In theory it
should be able to display a few attributes such as underline, inverse,
intense and blinking. We could have written special routines to cater
for these, but the resulting screens would not have displayed properly
on a colour monitor. Therefore we decided to leave the existing
colour- based program as it is. Colour is becoming increasingly common
and will one day be the standard.
DOS COMMANDS
------------
By pressing D you can type and execute Dos command lines. From here
you can get disc directories, copy and rename files, run external
utilities, and so on. The last Dos command you typed is remembered in
case you want to re-use it.
WIPE SCREEN
-----------
The W key clears the current editing screen down to the presently
selected paper.
CHARACTER SET
-------------
Pressing C allows you to view the PC's character set along with the
Ascii values.
WRITE MODE
----------
This is perhaps one of the few confusing aspects of CellBoss. Normally
when you type a character into the editing screen not only the text is
written, but its ink and paper too. This corresponds to a write mode
setting of TIP - text, ink and paper.
Suppose you'd designed a complicated background of papers on to which
you wanted to write some white text. You'd set the ink to white, but
in order to preserve the background you'd have to keep going back to
the menu to alter the paper setting. However, if you alter the write
mode to TI - text and ink - with the cursor keys after pressing T, you
can go round typing text leaving the existing papers intact.
Another example. Suppose you want to alter a few ink colours leaving
the existing text and paper. Set the write mode to I - ink - and
select the new ink. Now you can place the cursor over a character cell
and press any key. As only ink writing is enabled, only the ink will
be changed. You can do a similar thing with the paper - set option P -
and so on.
Certain other operations use the current write mode, and a possible
source of trouble is if you forget to set the write mode correctly. Be
careful! Especially with block moves where the original block is
wiped.
REPLACE
-------
The R key allows you to do a search and replace for a particular
character or colour. This works on either the whole screen or a block,
and is the only block operation not accessed through the Block
section.
The searched for character/ink/paper is the one under the cursor on
the editing screen. Selecting this option brings a prompt asking what
you want it replaced with - remember you can use the function keys
too. Replacement is done in the current ink and paper.
So far so good, but it should be noted that this option operates with
the currently selected write mode. For instance, if you have the write
mode set to TI - text and ink - the paper will be ignored in both the
search and replace. In this way you could, for example, replace all
white Xs with blue ones no matter that some Xs may have one paper
colour and others another.
In the default TIP mode, if the character under the cursor was a
bright blue E on a white background, only Es with that particular
paper and ink would be found. They would be replaced with whatever
character you typed in the currently selected ink and paper. In I mode
where only the inks are looked at ignoring text and paper, the same
situation would replace all occurrences of bright blue ink with the
current ink no matter what text character you typed or was under the
cursor. In T mode, all Es would be found no matter what their ink and
paper, and only the text would be replaced, not the colours.
This write mode filter on the search and replace makes it much more
flexible than a straight textual search, but can be confusing. Even
we've made mistakes with it. Remember to get the write mode set up
correctly or you'll think you've found a bug!
FUNCTION KEYS
-------------
Function keys F1 to F10 can be redefined, and up to 10 sets of
definitions can be stored. To select a function key set, press F and
the arrow next to the currently selected set will flash. Move it with
the up and down cursor keys, and press Return to finish.
While the arrow is flashing you may do two other things. Firstly, you
can redefine function keys. To select a key to redefine, press the
right cursor key until the marker is over the one you want. You can
the use the up and down cursor keys to scroll through the character
set, press a particular key, or use the Alt+keypad method. This
involves holding down Alt while typing a number on the keypad. This
number is the Ascii value of the character you want. Release Alt, and
the character will be generated.
To finish editing the keys, move the marker back to the left edge and
hit Return. If you press S (for save) before Return, the current
definitions will be saved and reloaded next time you start the
program.
GOTO X Y
--------
The numbers against X and Y indicate the current cursor coordinates.
The top left of the screen is 0,0 and the bottom right is 79,24. You
can send the cursor to a particular position by selecting G and
entering the new coordinates. Pressing Return when prompted for X or Y
leaves that ordinate unchanged.
CURSOR MOVEMENT and STEP
------------------------
By default, when you enter a character into the CellBoss editing
screen the cursor stays put. If you were typing text, this would be
inconvenient as you'd have to hit the right cursor key between every
letter.
Pressing M allows you to change this. Move the flashing marker to one
of the three options: stationary cursor, automatic move right after
every character, or automatic move down - handy for vertical writing.
Press Return when your selection is made.
In addition under the M option, you can define the cursor increments
in the X and Y directions. As with Goto, Return leaves the existing X
or Y increments unaffected. These increments also apply for normal
cursor movement with the arrow keys, giving a type of 'grid snap'
facility. At present only positive increments are supported, positive
being down and to the right.
BLOCK OPERATIONS
----------------
Several options can be performed on a rectangular area (block) of the
screen. All block operations are accessed by pressing B which will put
a flashing underline under the word block indicating a further key
press is required. All descriptions from hereon assume you've pressed
B.
Before you can operate on a block, you need to define its position and
size. The top left hand corner will be at the current cursor position.
Press D for define, and you'll be dropped into the editing screen. Use
the cursor keys to expand or contract the flashing block to the
desired size. This is one function which might not be so clear on a
mono monitor as it is in colour. Return completes the definition and
puts you back in the menu. You need to press B again if you want to
perform an operation on the block.
MOVE and COPY work in a similar way except that while COPY does what
it says, MOVE clears the original block area down to the current paper
colour. Selecting either function will bring the prompt:
(O)verwrite, (T)ransparent overwrite, (U)nderwrite?
Press O, T or U. In overwrite mode the block completely overwrites the
background. In Transparent overwrite mode, the background shows
through spaces in the block. With Underwrite the reverse is true - the
block shows through spaces in the background.
Having made your selection, you will be back in the editing screen.
This time the cursor keys move the block around until you're happy
with it. Esc aborts the function, while Return fixes the block where
you've placed it.
To move/copy the block to another screen, press G (for goto) and
you'll be asked for a screen number. Press a key 1-9, and you will be
teleported to the desired screen. This option does not affect the
number of the current editing screen, it is just a temporary excursion
to foreign climes.
In addition to these options, note that (and watch out for) the
current write mode. If, for example, IP is in operation, only the ink
and paper attributes will be moved leaving the text behind.
A block whose source and destination overlap is no problem and will be
handled correctly.
MIRROR (horizontally or vertically) reflects the block contents about
its Y and X axes respectively. Now think about this! If you try to
reflect the letter C, there isn't a character in the character set
that looks like a C reversed about its vertical axis, so it can't be
changed in shape, only in position. A character like > has a
corresponding < in the set, so this can be flipped to point the other
way in a mirror operation. All characters that can be flipped are,
those that can't aren't. There is no way round this restriction when
trying to cater for all display types.
If you want to draw an outlined box, first clear the block down to the
desired paper colour with the WIPE option, then use BOX. This will
draw a box inside the perimeter of the block. The OUTLINE option
allows you to select one of five frame styles by means of the up and
down cursor keys.
FILL allows you to fill the block (using the current write mode) with
one or more characters in the current ink and paper. As an example of
the effects you can achieve, define a reasonably large block (maybe
even the whole screen). Select the function key set with the shaded
and solid blocks (if your version still has them. If not, we'd
redefine them because they're very useful). Now press B and F to get
into the fill option. When prompted for the fill string, press space,
shaded block, solid block, solid block, shaded block and Return. Now
go into Edit mode to see the nice stripey wallpaper effect. Try using
the search and replace to alter the colour of individual stripe
styles. We're considering a proper pattern fill which will allow you
to fill with a 2D character pattern rather than a single line.
Finally we have SAVE and LOAD. The first saves the current block. We
don't envisage this being used to make a library - the block copy
between screens is better for that - but it's more of a programmers'
tool. You can design small areas of screen - logos and so on - and
load them into your own programs, perhaps for animation. The first two
bytes of the file are the width and height of the block respectively.
Subsequent bytes are rows of character/attribute combinations starting
from the top of the block working towards the bottom. Therefore a
block 20 characters wide by 10 deep will have the first two bytes as
20,10. Each 20 character row then follows in sequence occupying 40
bytes each. (20 x character+attribute).
THE LINE EDITOR
---------------
The current line editor is crude and is one area due for updating. At
the moment you can only type letters, backspace with the backspace
(Del) key, press Return to finish the editing the line, or press Esc.
Esc does two things. If there are already characters on the line, they
are cleared. If there are no characters, the line editor reports back
to the function which asked for a line to be edited. In many cases
this will abort the function. A proper line editor with
insert/overwrite modes is a definite possibility.
FUTURE PRODUCTS
---------------
At the time of writing we're still putting the finishing touches to
CellBoss. If it's a success, we'll be producing further packages. If
there's a program you've always wanted to see at this price, tell us.
If we take the idea up you'll have the opportunity to test a pre-
production version and make suggestions. When it's complete, you can
have a complimentary copy. We only envisage taking on projects which
will bring a reasonable return for our efforts, so Professional
Grungefettling Simulator and others of that ilk won't get a look in!
Those who register with us will be sent a mail shot when we have
something more to offer.
┌────────────────┐
│ logIX │
│ 2 Cromer Dr │
│ CREWE CW1 3XQ │
└────────────────┘
EXTRAS FREE ON REGISTRATION
---------------------------
FLASH.COM - Displays a CellBoss screen, for example in a batch file
or from GWBasic
SLIDE.COM - Similar to the above, but slides screens in.
BORDER.COM - Alter the border colour to one of 16 colours. More
effective with CGA than EGA.
DELAY.COM - Pauses for a specified time interval. Works with the
above in batch files for making rolling slideshows.
GETKEY.COM - Waits for the user to hit one of the keys in a list and
reports back through ERRORLEVEL. As it leaves you to
provide the 'Press a Key' prompt, you can use GETKEY
to provide a PAUSE command which doesn't corrupt your
nice CellBoss screen with text.
PLUS The C or Assembler source code for all the above (not CellBoss
itself).
(Some of the above may have the same or similar name to other Public
Domain and Shareware programs. They are in fact all originals supplied
as Public Domain software.)
PLUS We'll fill the disc up with some PD or shareware.
Please allow 28 days for delivery, though we hope to be much quicker
than that!
RIOT ACT
--------
CellBoss, this text file, and all other files associated with the
program are copyright logIX. You may copy and distribute the material
as you wish, BUT we will not allow you to make any charge other than
to cover duplication and mailing. CellBoss may not be sold for profit
other than by its authors (or by arrangement with them) so if you see
it being advertised at a profit-making price, please let us know.
You may use CellBoss to find out if it is useful. If it is, we expect
you to pay the registration fee. If you don't want it, please zap it
or pass it on.
If CellBoss is used to create screens for software itself to be
distributed (commercial or otherwise) we'd appreciate a plug! If you
let us know what the software is, we'll reciprocate in future text
files.
Needless to say, the program has been tested. However, as you are
being given the opportunity to try it before paying, it is up to you
to satisfy yourself before registration that it suits your needs and
runs on your hardware. If there turns out to be a bug, we will do our
best to fix it but accept no liability for loss of time, business or
anything else.
PLUGS
-----
Program written using Zortech C, instructions with the Protext word
processor.