CONDOR PAINT
Copyright 1993 by Larry Mears
All Rights Reserved
version 1.4
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ANY program that supports "EXTERNAL" ANSI (ANSI.SYS)
already has __INSTANT__ Condor support built it!
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Disclaimer: There is no gaurantee as to the performance of
CONDOR PAINT. The user assumes ALL risks involved
from the use of CONDOR PAINT.
INDEX
Description .................................................... 1
Using CPaint .................................................... 1
The MAIN Menu .................................................... 2
QUIT ............................................................ 2
FILE ............................................................ 2
NEW ............................................................ 2
COLOR ............................................................ 3
DRAW ............................................................ 4
POLY ............................................................ 4
FILL ............................................................ 4
CIRCLE .......................................................... 5
RECT .......................................................... 5
SOLIDS .......................................................... 5
TEXT .......................................................... 6
SOUND .......................................................... 6
UNDO .......................................................... 6
ZONES/ICONS....................................................... 7
EXTRA .......................................................... 8
CPaint Memory ................................................. 8
PAUSE .......................................................... 8
PLAY Graphic ................................................. 8
Position Cursor ................................................. 8
TEXT Area ....................................................... 8
COMMENTs ........................................................ 8
INPUT ........................................................... 8
Distribution Rights ............................................ 9
- 1 -
Condor Paint ( CPaint ) creates a ascii text file of graphic
commands in the correct syntax required by the CONDOR.SYS con: device
driver. CPaint requires that CONDOR.SYS be installed to function
correctly. Since CPaint isn't simply altering screen memory it
functions a little differently as other Paint programs you might use.
What CPaint is doing for you is more complex than you can imagine,
it makes a command for the action you selected from the menu & creates
coordinates for that command from the mouse position. Erasing is
accomplished by deleting (Undoing) the last command created.
CPaint can now be used to create graphical "Point & Click" menus for
use with DOS offline or as a BBS menu online, SEE the ZONEs entry.
CPAINT.EXE will look for GFABASIC.OVL when ran, put this in the same
directory as CPAINT.EXE or in a included directory in your PATH
statement. You _MUST_ have a MOUSE to use CPaint.
You can use CPaint to make online graphics, pictures, art,
advertisements, comics, BBS menus, whatever you like. These
graphics are displayable from DOS with just the TYPE command if
the CONDOR.SYS is installed, really far out!!! CPaint will
check your free memory and adjust it's buffer to that, the more free
memory you have the bigger more detail CPaint pic you can create.
CPaint may not be able to load and work with "any" CONDOR.SYS format
graphic due to the limitations imposed by the language CPaint was
written in, CPaint is intended to create and work with CONDOR files
CPaint has created only. You can use a text editor and load CPaint
files to hand edit. The CONDOR graphics script looks like a bunch
of letters and numbers, if you refer to the CONDOR.DOC (the manual)
you will be able to look these these letters (commands) up and see
what CPaint is doing. A human is smarter than CPaint any day and can
out do CPaint with a little effort and a text editor. The & loop
command can provide a lot of punch but is to complex for CPaint to
handle, but YOU can do it! You can do some really sharp work just
using CPaint though.
When CPaint is ran from DOS, not recomended to run from WINDOWS,
you will get the title screen and a note about 2 BUTTON exit. A
2 BUTTON EXIT is simply this: PRESS and HOLD the right mouse button
and while holding down the right mouse button also press the left
mouse button then release both. This is used as a EXIT to the
MAIN MENU in CPaint. From the title screen however just CLICK on the
OK button. The next thing that confronts you is a RESOLUTION
selection menu. You must select a resolution the abort won't work
from here. The format for instance 320x200x256 means 320 pixels(dots)
across ( know as the X coordinate ) and 200 pixels tall ( know as the
Y coordinate ) and the last part means the number of colors, 256 in
this example, 320x200x256 a VGA mode and requires a VGA graphics card.
- 2 -
The MAIN Menu will now come up. Here's a breakdown:
QUIT - Exit CPaint, go back to DOS.
FILE - Use this selection to LOAD a CPaint file or SAVE a CPAINT file.
No backup files are created and if a file name exists already
it will be over written without warning. When a file is loaded
from here the current picture you are drawing will be wiped out.
CPaint uses the filename.EXT to adjust IT's resolution.
Don't load a file in that isn't the resolution "Rx:" that
the filename.EXT says it is. For example the filname might be
PICTURE.R13 but the file itself contain a esc{R18:...esc}
It make CPaints menus screwy for sure! It's GFABasic it just
doesn't check the resolution on the fly. I worked around it as
best I could so I could use it's built in GUI commands.
SAVE - This saves the graphic out. It will ask if you want to place
a PAUSE at the end of the picture and then if you want to reset
the screen to TEXT mode. You can also change the FONT on EXIT
here. Try the 8x8 FONT for a 50 line text screen. I hope to
add more support for Condor 5's Font commands in a later Cpaint
version, BUT!!! check out the File FONTCVT.EXE.
_X-SAVE_ is a eXperimental save format. It saves CPaint files
in a ONE-LINE buffer format. This is GOOD if you can't turn off
a BBS's pause screenfulls every 25 lines or so, this format plus
the "TEXT Area" option under the EXTRA entry from the MAIN menu
can keep the BBS's PAUSE-PROMT from getting into CONDOR's buffer
as commands and also limit the BBS pause prompt to the top line
of the screen. X-SAVE may mangle some things so ALWAYS do a
normal SAVE first then a X-SAVE. Some things like ZONE menus,
MUSIC and LOOPing could be messed up by X-SAVE. If it's just
straight graphics for maybe a message base it will probably
work just fine. You should be aware that LOADing a X-SAVEd
file and then doing a normal SAVE on it will NOT restore a
CPaint file to it's original SAVEd state. That's why you
should always do a normal SAVE on a graphic before trying the
X-SAVE. X-SAVE may be the only solution in some cases, and
even if a X-SAVEd file doesn't work you can check the CONDOR.DOC
to see why and tweek it with a text editor.
The EXIT command takes you back to the MAIN menu.
NEW - This allows you to start a new pic in a different resolution than
the one selected when CPaint was first ran. The current picture
will be wiped out, so remember to SAVE it from the file menu.
You can select ABORT and go SAVE it first, or maybe you want to
start with a clean screen and empty buffer in the same resolution
in effect killing the drawing you were working on, the NEW option
does this.
- 3 -
COLOR - This alters the color you are working with and or changes a
color to another from the color palette. The options can vary
from this selection depending on the resolution you are using.
A sub menu will pop up from this menu, then you select what you
want to use the color for, POLY, LINES, FILLS, TEXT, or PALETTE
to alter the color palette. After clicking on points, lines,
fills, or text you will see a color bar, click on the color you
want to use for the previous selected drawing operation.
If you select PALETTE and are in a CGA mode you are given
the option to alter FOREGROUND or BACKGROUND color. If you pick
BACKGROUND then next click on the ALTER button till you get the
color you want then click on OK. If you select FOREGROUND
click on ALTER and then OK when it's what you want.
In 2 color screen modes and modes 320x200x16 and 640x200x16
the PALETTE option has no effect. You can not change the
Palette for these modes.
In the EGA 640x350x16 and VGA 640x480x16 modes when you click
on PALETTE you will get the options BORDER or SCREEN. If you
select BORDER just CLICK on the ALTER button till you get the
border(outer most screen edge) you like then click on OK.
If you select SCREEN then click on the color in the color bar
that you wish to ALTER, then click on ALTER over and over till
you get what color you desire the click on OK. You have to
still reselect COLOR from MAIN and tell what to use this
new color for POINTS, LINES, FILLS, or TEXT.
If you are using VGA mode 320x200x256 and select PALETTE you
will see a mesh of 256 colors, click on the one you wish to
alter, then you will see a slide bar CLICK on the BAR to
adjust the color level. Press the RIGHT mouse button to
toggle to RED, GREEN or BLUE. Click on OK when you get
the color mixture you need or do the 2 button exit to abort.
You still have to reselect the COLOR option from the MAIN menu
tell CPaint what you want to use this new color for,
POINTs, LINEs, FILLs, or Text.
- 4 -
DRAW - You select this function from the MAIN menu to draw lines.
You should select COLOR first to set a COLOR for the lines
you will be drawing. The draw routine is designed to draw
lines in a flowing motion of the mouse, so sometimes it's a
little cranky to get the line started. Move the mouse
slightly then press the left button to anchor the line, now
just move the mouse around till you get the other end point
of the line where you want it and press the left mouse button
to make the line permanent. Once you anchor a line down you
can change the lines anchor point by hitting the right mouse
button. To exit to the main menu you must use the
2 BUTTON EXIT: press and hold the right mouse button then while
holding that button also press the left mouse button, then
release both.
POLY - This will plot a polymarker at the location of the mouse
pointer when the left mouse button it pressed. You should use
the COLOR option from the MAIN menu to set the color to use for
the polymarkers you are plotting. DO NOT use this command to
draw with, while it's possible it will make your picture really
big and a lot slower. I would only use this to plot stars in
the sky, or hit a few points where a FILL may have missed.
The SET MARK option lets you select the polymarker shape to
plot. Just click on the name of the one you want and move the
mouse up and down to size it. The picture will be redisplayed
after you finish this operation to clean up the screen.
Use the 2 button exit to get back to the MAIN menu.
FILL - This fills a area with the Fill COLOR you selected from the
COLOR menu. The first four options are a border fill, you
specify what you want to border the fill with. This is the
CURRENTLY selected color for POINTs, LINEs, FILLs, or TEXT.
This fill can leak out even if just ONE dot is missing in a
border. ALL colors within the border are replaced with the
current FILL color. The last option in the FILL MENU called
"Interior Color" produces a different type of fill operation.
This fill gets the color where the fill begins at and replaces
ONLY that color with the currently selected FILL color. The
range of this fill is to the edge of the color it is replacing.
To FILL a area just select the BORDER type from the menu then
click on the area to FILL. The FILL is one of CONDOR's weak
points right, now. If speed is real important use the lower
320x200 resolutions, another option to gain faster fills in
higher resolutions is the FAST TEXT BLOCK option from the FILL
MENU. It will make a RECTANGLE using the current fill color
really fast, then use the slower BORDER or INTERIOR fills to
catch the rough edges. Eventually I hope to add some CUSTOM
graphics routines to speed this up, maybe 5 to 10 times faster
if I can pull it off.
Use the 2 button exit to go back to the MAIN menu.
- 5 -
CIRCLE - This pulls up a menu with 2 options, Condor Circles and
Plotted Ovals. The Condor Circle's color is determined by
what color is selected for LINEs, although if you are drawing
a disc the interior color is the selected FILL color. Condor
Circles are done internally take just a few bytes to produce
and are draw very fast, their drawback is that there is no
aspect ratio, so the best looking Condor Circles drawn will be
in the 320x200 and 640x480 screen resolutions. I tried real
hard to include aspect ratios but dos would always lock up!
The other option Plotted OVALS will produce a OVAL and there
by you can have perfect circles in any mode with this command.
The color of the PLOTTED Oval is the color you select from the
color MENU for POINTs. Plotted Ovals are just that CPAINT
does all the math to figure out the coordinates for each point
plotted and produces a CONDOR Plot command for each one. This
is slow but fast online because the math is already done, BUT
it is very memory hungry and if the Oval is large the CPaint
picture will be very large and that means time. The
Plotted Oval command should be used only if absolutely needed!
After you select the type of circle you want to draw just
move the mouse arrow around and click the left mouse button to
anchor the center of the circle, then move your mouse up and
down to set the diameter of the circle. When you get the size
circle you want click on the left mouse button to make the
circle permanent. If you click the right mouse button you can
reposition the center of the circle. To abort or exit the
the circle drawing do a 2 button exit.
RECT - RECTANGLES This will first pull up a menu with 2 options.
With the first option "PIXELS" you move the mouse arrow then
click the left button to anchor the upper left corner of the
rectangle, then you stretch a rectangle to the size you need
and click the left mouse button again to make it permanent.
A right mouse button click will allow you to reposition the
upper left corner of the rectangle. You do the 2 button exit
to get back to the main menu. The color of the PIXEL rectangle
is determined by the current LINE color. If you are drawing a
SOLID rectangle the interior color is the current FILL color.
The second option for rectangle is the "CHARACTER" option.
When you click on this you will see a text information line in
upper left section of the screen. Move your mouse left and
right to obtain the ASCII character you want to make the
rectangle with then click the left mouse button. Move the
mouse to put the upper left corner of the rectangle where you
want it then click the left mouse button. Now move the mouse
right, left, up, down to see the four corners of the rectangle.
When you get it the size you want press the left mouse button.
It will draw a rectanglar area consisting of the character you
chose. This command is great to FILL a large area FAST!
The ASCII character number 219 is great for this. You can use
the slower graphic fill command to catch the edges. To go to
the MAIN menu do a 2 button exit.
SOLIDS - This menu entry selects whether a rectangle or circle will
be filled using with the current fill color, after a circle or
rectangle is draw using the current line color.
The Plotted Oval is not affect by this setting and the
default setting is HOLLOW at startup. Just click the
left mouse button on the setting you want SOLID or HOLLOW.
- 6 -
TEXT - Selecting this menu entry allows you to type a sentence
up to 128 characters in length. You can edit this sentence
using the ARROW keys and the INSERT and ESC keys. Hit ENTER
when you finish typing your sentence. Use the mouse to
position this sentence where ever you like and press the
left mouse button to place your sentence. The color of the
text is the currently selected text color set from the COLOR
menu entry. To EXIT or abort use the 2 button exit, the
ESC key only clears the line.
SOUND - This menu entry allows you to insert canned sound effects
or music into your graphic. If you select EFFECTS you will
get a menu of sound effects, just click on one to hear it.
To actually place a sound effect into a graphic, just click
on the one you want then click on ACCEPT. The MORE entry will
bring up a alternate menu with different sound effects.
If you select MUSIC you will be able to point and click on
a piano keyboard to play mouse music. To make a tune click
on RECORD and then click on the piano keys, when done you can
click on PLAY to hear it. When you get your tune the way you
want it click on OK. You abort a tune by clicking on ABORT.
You can click on PRACTICE and play all you like for fun.
UNDO - This menu entry will ERASE the last CONDOR command that
CPAINT created. This command may be a visable command or not.
While you can see a LINE that is not drawn, you can't see a
color command that is erased. After chopping the last command
off in it's buffer CPAINT will have to redisplay the whole
CONDOR format picture from the beginning to insure that the
setting or change takes effect. A word of warning, if you
find that you want to erase a PLOTTED OVAL you will only be
killing one DOT of it at a time. This can take some time, you
may want to hand edit it out with a text editor. A
Plotted Oval can consist of HUNDREDs of PLOT commands! If you
hand edit it out watch for the esc}esc#A at the end of the
file and leave that intact.
- 7 -
ZONES - This Main Menu entry let's you make Point & Click(P&C) menus
with BUTTONS or ICONS you draw. You can use these P&C menus
to issue 4 letter commands to the DOS command line or a BBS.
It's great for making a a DOS GUI that RUNs .BAT files! The
uses here are just ENDLESS!!! P&C menus use the ARROW keys,
you may be able to get your mouse driver to produce these.
P&C menus can be created for BBS menus too! You just
run them as a LANGUAGE on your BBS or a alternate set
of menus to ANSI/ASCII. Check out the CONDOR.DOC for
AUTO-DETECTION of CONDOR.SYS and send your BBS
author a copy of CONDOR v4.0 and tell him you want Condor
support if your BBS software isn't versital enough to allow
anything but ANSI/ASCII. The BBS author can distribute
CONDOR.SYS and a short readme file about Condor being
donation-ware or the whole CONDOR 4.0 package.
From the Zone menu select STEP 1 and then go draw a ICON or
BUTTON using CPAINT after each ICON or BUTTON you DRAW select
*ICON* from the Main Menu, you might be tempted to draw several
ICONs but you must only draw ONE then select *ICON*. Now you
will be back in the ZONE menu the next thing to do is select
STEP 2. You will then be asked to set a UNIQUE ZONE number
for the ICON. Just click on GET, and CPaint will find a
free ZONE number. You can click on UP or DOWN and set it
then click on OK but you need to be sure that the ZONE number
hasn't been used already. I suggest Selecting ZONE number 63
and setting it to the whole screen.
After setting the ZONE number you will be asked to LASSO the
ZONE area. Just move the cross hair to the upper left corner
of the ICON or BUTTON you drew and click and pull open a box
surrounding it. Now click again and CPaint will ask you to
TYPE a STRING that this ICON or BUTTON is to transmit to the
BBS or DOS command line. Hit ENTER when you get it typed.
Finally CPaint will ask if you want CONDOR to send a carriage
return after the STRING the ICON or BUTTON sends. Then you will
be back in the ZONE menu, go draw another ICON or BUTTON and
do STEP 2 again over and over till you get all the ICONs drawn
and Lasso-ed.
When you get them all drawn then select
FINISH Menu / Add Pointer. You will then pop out to the
SETCOLOR Menu, select POLYMARKERS, pick your favorite color.
Next you will pop into the POLY menu, select SET MARK. Pick
the POLY Shape you want. After this just go and SAVE it all
from the FILE menu. You can add a 'little' bit more graphics
before you SAVE the P&C menu but a lot may make the
transmition of the STRING premature.
DELETING ICONs - You can delete them while in the creation
process BUT don't try deleting the LAST ICON unitl AFTER you
SAVE it. CPaint will highlight each ICON one by one and ask
you if you want to delete it, just click on YES and it's gone!
It deletes all graphics created while you were drawing the
ICON, not just the LASSO-ed ZONE area.
EXIT - just exits to the Main Menu doing nothing.
- 8 -
EXTRA - This entry brings up a sub menu that offers some miscellaneous
commands and utilities. Descriptions are as follows:
CPAINT Memory - Displays the Cpaint memory free and the amount
of CPAINT memory used. The amount of memory
that CPAINT can use is limited by what is free
in the DOS conventional 640K memory.
PAUSE x Sec - This will create a PAUSE command in the graphic.
Move you mouse up and down to vary the length of
pause. Click the left mouse button to accept or
do the 2 button EXIT to abort. Users can ABORT
this pause by pressing the CTRL key.
PLAY GRAPHIC - This will redisplay your drawings from beginning
to end.
POSITION CURSOR - Use to position the text cursor.
To place the cursor just move the mouse around
and click the left mouse button.
A 2 button EXIT will abort this command.
TEXT Area - This lets you do a WHOLE screen clear without
resetting a bunch of defaults. It also allows
you to EXPAND the number of TEXT lines to 30 if
in a 480 TALL graphics mode. You can also
SHRINK the number of normal TEXT lines the
screen has to as little as ONE line. This
puts normal text above and you can have your
graphics below _undisturbed_ by text scrolling.
Really useful for doing graphic illustrations
for disk based BOOKs or Catalogs. It can be
used in combination with X-SAVE to keep that
ANNOYING BBS pause prompt to remain on the
top most screen line. To clear just the
TEXT area set by this command use a
ANSI esc[2J
COMMENT - This lets you type in a COMMENT that will be in
the CONDOR script, but not seen. You can use it
for whatever you want. CPaint uses comments to
MARK where ICONs or BUTTONs begin and end.
Comments can be really useful.
INPUT - This gets KEYBOARD input from the user. You
can use it to suspend a screen before proceeding
to the next one or switching back to text mode.
It has several options and CPaint will prompt
you with the choices. This command can send
the INPUT to the DOS command line or BBS with
or without a carriage return and it can display
the INPUT or NOT, it also can KEEP or just TOSS
the INPUT away.
- 9 -
**********************************************************************
DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS:
Their is no cost or fee for SHAREWARE authors to include
CONDOR support, they can include CONDOR.SYS in their
distribution package or the whole Condor 5.0 release.
If you only include part of the release, just include the
LICENSE.DOC file explaining that CONDOR is
DONATION-WARE send $15 to:
Larry Mears
11027 Crestfield Dr.
Huntsville, AL 35803 USA
To support Condor and encourage updates.
The full package can be obatained from:
GEnie IBM PC RT, BBS RT, DigiPub RT
or THE UNKNOWN SYSTEM BBS
running VBBS 205-534-8532 14400 v.32bis
Interested partys can write me at:
Genie EMAIL address L.MEARS
Galleria BBS leave EMAIL to CONDOR
or send me US MAIL
