jwhitman@st-louis-emh2.army.mil (Jerry Whitman) (06/05/89)
Either I have a net problem or my questions have fallen on deaf ears (would you believe unseeing eyes?). I sent the following out several days ago and got minimal response. My forays in the past have usually resulted in quick and comprehensive response from a variety of sources. Judging by the lack of volume of response and the length of time to get a reply I am assuming there was a leak in the pipe somewhere, so ... here we go again. BTW! I suspect some of the things I want to do can be accomplished via library/function calls. I need some pointers here. - - - - - - - - - - ORIGINAL QUESTIONS - - - - - - - - I have been doing a few tasks in Basic for my Ami and as a result I now have a few "How do I..." questions. 1. Blinking text - On the I*M PC side you can add 16 to a color value in the COLOR statement and cause subsequent text to blink. AmigaBasic does not recognize this idea, so how can I make text blink selectively? 2. Function key trapping - Again, on the I*M PC side you can use the ON KEY to trap specific function keys. I cannot find any functional equivelant on my Amy. (NOTE - I thought that the Amiga version of the Microsoft Basic was a superset of the MSDOS version. If so these type functions are probably there but I cannot recognize them. I must admit that the manual that is supplied does not do very much to explain a lot of the functionality available to the Amy. I have had to revert to the MSDOS manual several times for clarification <Odd Twist>, and for functions unique to the Amy I am doing a lot of guessing!) 3. Scrolling - I want to build a text list of 30 to 40 lines that lays beneath a 'cover' screen that has a window large enough to see only 15 lines at a time. What do I do to make the window relocate relative to the underlying text so it appears the text is scrolling up or down as the need dictates? Sounds simple, but I cannot get a clue from the AmigaBasic manual. I know many of these are fundamental questions once you know the answer, but without the knowledge they are more like insurmountable opportunities! Thanks for the help. Jerry
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (06/06/89)
In article <16899@louie.udel.EDU> (Jerry Whitman) writes: >Either I have a net problem or my questions have fallen on deaf ears (would >you believe unseeing eyes?). busy fingers ? >I have been doing a few tasks in Basic for my Ami and as a result I now >have a few "How do I..." questions. And not to many BASIC wizards at all... >1. Blinking text - On the I*M PC side you can add 16 to a color value >in the COLOR statement and cause subsequent text to blink. AmigaBasic >does not recognize this idea, so how can I make text blink selectively? Can't do it. The PC uses a character generator that has a font attribute "blink" in it, that causes it to blink it. The only way to simulate that on the Amiga is to change the color map. But wait, now every thing blinks, see the problem? Sorry, try inverse video for highlights, or italics. Can't do that on a PC :-) (Ok so you can with a RAMFont hercules card, gimme a break ok?) >2. Function key trapping - Again, on the I*M PC side you can use the >ON KEY to trap specific function keys. I cannot find any functional >equivelant on my Amy. > >(NOTE - I thought that the Amiga version of the Microsoft Basic was a >superset of the MSDOS version. If so these type functions are probably >there but I cannot recognize them. I must admit that the manual that >is supplied does not do very much to explain a lot of the functionality >available to the Amy. I have had to revert to the MSDOS manual several >times for clarification <Odd Twist>, and for functions unique to the Amy >I am doing a lot of guessing!) Well you can use "ON KEY" but generally that only traps things like break keys. I don't even know if the function keys are available from the vanilla BASIC because it uses VANILLAKEYS rather than converting them for you. And AmigaBASIC *isn't* a superset of GWBasic, rather it is more of a "flavor". >3. Scrolling - I want to build a text list of 30 to 40 lines that lays >beneath a 'cover' screen that has a window large enough to see only 15 >lines at a time. What do I do to make the window relocate relative to >the underlying text so it appears the text is scrolling up or down as >the need dictates? Sounds simple, but I cannot get a clue from the >AmigaBasic manual. Not really very easy. The way to do it in C is to use a UserClipRect and just render the text into the window, you can use the basic SCROLL function by the "cover" effect of which you speak might best be achieved by actually opening a borderless window "over" your text. >I know many of these are fundamental questions once you know the answer, >but without the knowledge they are more like insurmountable opportunities! Actually, getting anything fancy done in BASIC requires quite a bit of ingenuity, and sad to say, many folks just gave up and went to C, M2, Forth, or what have you. Microsoft BASIC has gone so far beyond what the people at Dartmouth probably originally envisioned that I can't believe there is any easy way to put the constructs of window systems and Amiga like graphics into the language. You can always punt of course and call the Amiga libraries directly, that being what the Library function is for. >Thanks for the help. Sorry it isn't more positive. It would be nice to have an interpreted language that had the power of Jforth and the right brain model of BASIC on the Amiga. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. "A most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"