Apple II
Technical Notes
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                                                  Developer Technical Support

Mouse
#6:    MouseText Characters

Revised by:    Matt Deatherage                                   January 1989
Revised by:    Rilla Reynolds                                   November 1985

This Technical Note describes the MouseText character set which is available 
on all currently produced Apple II computers.
Changed since November 1988:  Corrected typographical errors in the BASIC 
and assembly language program examples.
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In unenhanced Apple IIe computers, the alternate character set contained two 
sets of inverse uppercase characters.  In the enhanced Apple IIe, and in all 
Apple IIc and IIGS computers, one set of inverse uppercase characters is 
replaced by a MouseText character set.  MouseText is a set of graphical 
characters designed to allow Apple II computers to display a desktop metaphor 
on the text screen.  The Apple II Desktop Toolkit uses these characters, as do 
applications like AppleLink-Personal Edition.

If your program used the set of inverse uppercase characters which were 
replaced by MouseText (the set mapped to ASCII values $40-$5F), your program 
will display MouseText characters instead of inverse uppercase characters on 
all currently-produced Apple II computers.  If your program used the other set 
of inverse uppercase characters (ASCII values $00-$1F), it will display 
inverse capital characters as expected.

The following will help you identify if the changes affect you or not.

1.    If your program is written entirely in BASIC or Pascal or your 
      assembly language program calls the COUT routine to put characters 
      on the screen, you are not affected.  The only exception would be 
      if you print (POKE) inverse characters directly to the text screen 
      in BASIC.
2.    If your program uses the standard character set (checkerboard 
      cursor) you are not affected.
3.    If your program is using the alternate character set (solid 
      cursor) and is directly storing values (via POKE) to the text 
      display area, you will encounter problems if your character values 
      are in the range from 64 ($40) to 95 ($5F).  To recreate the 
      original display, use values in the range from 0 ($0) to 31 ($1F) 
      instead.  Note that these lower values display as inverse 
      uppercase characters on older machines as well.


Following are the methods recommended for accessing MouseText characters from 
various languages:

AppleSoft BASIC

1.    Turn on the video firmware with PR#3 (if under DOS 3.3 or 
      ProDOS, use PRINT CHR$(4);"PR#3")
2.    Enable MouseText characters by printing an ASCII 27 ($1B) to 
      the screen.
3.    Set inverse printing mode by printing an ASCII 15 ($0F) to the 
      screen.

To stop displaying MouseText  characters:

1.    Disable MouseText characters by printing an ASCII 24 ($18) to 
      the screen.
2.    Set normal print mode (if desired) by printing an ASCII 14 
      ($0E) to the screen.

This short BASIC program displays all MouseText characters under DOS 3.3 and 
ProDOS:

    10    D$=CHR$(4)
    20    PRINT D$;"PR#3": REM Turn on the video firmware
    30    PRINT:REM This is so the screen won't be in inverse
    40    PRINT CHR$(15):REM Set inverse mode
    50    PRINT CHR$(27);"ABCEDFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ@[]^_\";CHR$(24)
    60    PRINT CHR$(14):END

Assembly Language

Assembly language programs are expected to follow the same procedure as 
AppleSoft BASIC.  Use calls to COUT to print MouseText characters to the 
screen.  The following is a sample assembly language program which displays 
two MouseText characters (which create a folder icon), along with their 
inverse uppercase equivalents:

START        LDA #$A0           ;USE A BLANK SPACE TO
             JSR $C300          ;TURN ON THE VIDEO FIRMWARE
             LDY #0             ;INITIALIZE COUNTER
LOOP         LDA STR,Y          ;GET VALUE
             JSR $FDED          ;SEND IT THROUGH THE COUT ROUTINE
             INY
             CPY STRLEN
             BNE LOOP           ;=>NOT DONE YET
             RTS
STR          DFB $1B,$58,$59,$18,$58,$59
                                ;MOUSETEXT ON, SHOW, MOUSETEXT OFF, SHOW
STRLEN       EQU *-STR          ;LENGTH OF STR

Note:    Using MouseText on the text screen by directly poking or 
storing MouseText character values into the text buffer is not 
supported by Apple at this time.  Should the MouseText character 
set require remapping in the future, those programs which use the 
methods outlined in this Note should still work with any new 
mapping.  Those which directly store MouseText values run the 
strong risk of display failure under a new mapping.


Apple II Pascal

1.    Output a CHR(27), an escape character, to enable MouseText.
2.    Output a CHR(15) to turn on inverse video.
3.    Output the appropriate capital letter for the desired MouseText 
      character.

A Pascal sample program:

    PROGRAM OUTPUT_MOUSETEXT
    VAR CMD:PACKED ARRAY[0..1] OF 0..255
    BEGIN
        CMD[0]:=27; CMD[1]:=15;
        UNITWRITE(1,CMD,2); {turn on MouseText mode}
        {code to display MouseText
                    .
                    .
                    .
        }
        CMD[0]:=24;
        UNITWRITE(1,CMD,1); {turn off MouseText mode}
    END

Pictorial descriptions of the MouseText character set may be found in the 
Apple IIe Technical Reference Manual, the Apple IIc Technical Reference 
Manual, and the Apple IIGS Hardware Reference.

Note:    The pictures of MouseText characters in these manuals differ 
from early implementations.  In early MouseText character sets, 
the icons mapped to the letters F and G combined to form a 
"running man."  In current production, these letters are different 
pictures (an inverse carriage return symbol and a window title bar 
pattern) which form no picture when placed next to each other.  
Programs should not attempt to use the running man MouseText 
characters.


Further Reference
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o    Apple IIGS Hardware Reference
o    Apple IIe Technical Reference Manual
o    Apple IIc Technical Reference Manual