TheDraw 4.63 ============ Maintenance release. A glitch which came and went... came back. Blinking colors in Ansi files would not be properly output if 1) they were the first colors used and 2) not on the first line. Special thanks to William Zakreski for reporting this. TDFonts would exit with the cursor turned off in some situations; this should be fixed now. Thanks to Brian Morin for writing in. Avatar, PCBoard, and Wildcat formats can now optionally reset the display color to light gray on the end of files. The reset is enabled by default, and corresponds to how Ansi files are handled. To turn off the color reset, choose Setup from the Options pulldown menu, go to page 2, and change the "Reset colors..." toggle. Thank Alan Shoemaker for recommending this one. TheDraw now handles @CLS@ Wildcat/PCBoard commands properly. In an attempt to filter the @CLS@ command TheDraw adds itself, all were removed. Lastly, Wildcat/PCBoard slowdown codes are usable now. Remember, do not assume someone else will report a bug you find! Please write TheSoft or call G.A.D.M. at (510) 581-3019 if you ever find something wrong. Thanks! TheDraw 4.62 ============ Maintenance release. Bugs with PCBoard/Wildcat files related to background colors, scrolling (ie: color wrap-around), and output slow down fixed. Also repaired minor glitch in ALT-A screen when Numlock was turned on - the arrow keys would only increment colors. Ansi files now include a special sequence which turns on line wrap-around on terminal programs. This should help with headaches related to the display of characters in the 80th column. Wildcat/PCBoard Sysops: Because no cursor control is available in these formats, display output cannot be accurately controlled. TheDraw assumes line wrap-around is turned on (the standard Ansi configuration). If a caller happens to have line wrap-around turned off, placing characters in column 80 will corrupt the following lines. There are two solutions: either do not place characters in column 80, or display a short Ansi file when your user first logs turning on line wrapping. All TheDraw v4.62 Ansi files now include the appropriate Ansi sequence (ie: save a blank screen). Special thanks to Luke Rice for reporting how typing an 'A' in the color setup (ALT-A) screen might cause a crash. TheDraw 4.61 ============ A few minor problems have turned up, which are taken care of in this maintenance release. A bug in PRINTDOC prevented two sided printing, THEGRAB did not properly handle some interrupts, the Setup utility had a couple of hiccups, and TheDraw glitched the foreground color in creating Ansi files with a space in the upper-left corner. Special thanks to: Anthony Haxton for reporting the Setup utility would sometimes not recognize the registered version of TheDraw. Paul Hirsch for pointing out in the defaults configuration area of the Setup utility one prompt worked backwards (ie: type Yes, and get No). TheDraw 4.60 ============ The following new features were added for version 4.60: o The Quick Palette. This allows you to choose any color and extended character symbol quickly an easily. It is available when the pulldown menus are displayed (press ESC or the right mouse button). Choosing a symbol from the Quick Palette selects the associated function key set. o Manual character painting. You can "pick-up" any symbol, and draw by using SHIFT-Arrow keys. To pick-up a character, press the ALT-/ key combination. Any symbol selected via the Quick Palette becomes the current picked character. o A memory resident screen capture utility is now included, called THEGRAB. TheGrab can capture any text mode screen and create TheDraw format files, Dos COM files, Ansi files, or Ascii files directly. It is small, needing only 12k of memory. o A new 80 character by 100 line edit buffer option (static screens only). Ever have the need to create an extremely long scrolling color Ansi file? Now you can do it entirely within TheDraw! The fact the screen -will- scroll is incompatible with animated images. o MULTI-COLOR FONTS! The previous release could only use single color fonts when entering. This version permits you to use and create font symbols drawn with multiple colors. In fact, you could create a "font" of small block graphics if desired now. Color fonts show a "C" postfix in the Fonts pulldown menu. o Animation Fade Out. Ever wish you have an image appear, and then disappear using the same effect? Previously is was an awkward thing to do, forcing you to use sprite mode, solid spaces, a little futzing. This option works identically to a Fill, but in addition prompts for an animation scanner type. Neat stuff! o Animation auto-repeat display. Typing "A" from the ALT-Q Redraw prompt will make TheDraw redraw an animation sequence over and over until you hit a key. Useful if your animation has a difficult to find hiccup. o Ability to view TheDraw format files. You see what would be present if you loaded the TD file. o Library files. Do you maintain both TD and Ansi files for all your screen images? Now you can put all the TD files into one place, and attach a descriptive comment also. The library directory shows the description, screen dimensions, and whether the entry is static, animated, or a block save. o TheDraw format file compression. TD files are now compressed when saved to greatly reduce disk space requirements. This applies to Library file entries also. o C code file format revised to be compatible with more compilers. o Three new file formats for BBS system operators: Avatar, PCBoard and Wildcat BBS compatible formats can now be loaded/saved with TheDraw. Avatar files can be animated. PCBoard/Wildcat "@-code" files are limited to static only screens currently. o To go along with the PCBoard and Wildcat formats, a quick reference table of all @-codes is provided. From normal (non-animated) mode, type ALT-Q (note that in animation mode, ALT-Q works as always). o A screen auto-compress option was added to the Setup screen. Do you block marking screens to avoid unused lines being output on the bottom of the display? TheDraw can now optionally remove those unused lines in Ansi, Ascii, Avatar, PCBoard, Wildcat static formats automatically. o PRINTDOC now supports HP laserjet printers. o TheDraw checks for the presence of Quarterdeck's Desqview (tm) operating environment. If found, screen initialization is skipped to avoid making Desqview always switch on EGA/VGA screen modes. o For registered users, the SHADING.TD screen is now built right in! Type ALT-A twice, or select from the pulldown menu. This shows all available color shading combinations possible using dither characters from function key set 6. Plus several other minor enhancements throughout the program! Bug Fixes ========= - Text centering in Animation mode could possibly lockup TheDraw if blank lines were present. This has been fixed. - Viewing object files no longer corrupts screen data. - Column Insert/Delete should no longer insert extraneous characters, if the numeric keypad arrows are used. - Loading an Ansi file into a 23 line buffer might have resulted in the bottom line being lost. This no longer occurs. - Problems with Ansi Include Files not being copied properly was fixed. - Ansi Loader much less likely to spuriously turn on animation mode when it is not called for. - Improved handling of "color bleeding" which occurs when scrolling Ansi files write characters to the lower-right corner of the screen. - Fixed problem with loading block files from the command line. Occasionally random garbage would appear surrounding the wanted data. - A number of minor fixes and cosmetic improvements to TDFonts. A rare bug with creating the "~" symbol has been fixed. It could partly damage the symbol data. - QuickBasic calls to functions UNCRUNCH, ASCIIDISPLAY, and NORMALDISPLAY could leave parameters on the stack. Recompile your code with the new functions included here. - Block COM files might have received invalid screen offsets if the worksheet was scrolled at all. - Global Screen Move now works properly when scrolled down into a large worksheet. - When saving an animated Ansi file, the cursor is no longer forced to the left most column. The last character output in the Animation sequence is where the cursor will be left. - You could "click" on status line options, even the status line was not there (ie: full screen mode). Now you can't. - SETUP utility keyboard configuration now ignores Shift key codes, this to handle some keyboards which send such codes before cursor control keys. Plus several other minor fixes. Special Thanks to: Toby Vander Steen for finding animation text centering bug. Gary Yuen for object file viewing and column insert/delete glitches. Michael Arnett for pointing out the animation include files were less than perfect. Brad Crouch for finding a circumstance in which COM files would not be saved properly. B.J. Freeman for indicating the Setup utility keyboard config bug. Dafyd V. Smith for the 23 line buffer loading problem, and suggesting animation auto-repeating! David P. Hummel and Dafyd V. Smith for suggesting the animation fade out! Abram Miller for suggesting the modified dos prompt when doing a dos shell! Carter Downer for suggesting the Quick Palette feature, screen autocompress, and BBS file formats! The many users who all requested the screen capture utility! Please do not assume someone else will write about a bug you find. Write a letter and be immortalized in the doc's of TheDraw! In any case, Enjoy!