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The Business Master (3rd Edition)
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BANHELP.TXT
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1985-03-03
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13KB
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215 lines
FOR A PRINTED COPY OF THIS DOCUMENTATION, --> RUN "BANDOC.BAS".
*BANNER* is designed to help you get a message to the screen as
easily as possible. It can LOAD and SAVE files from disk, and includes an
editor with a user definable set of color keys to make *BANNER* color changes
easy. Entries can be in UPPER or lower case throughout the program. When you
see <ENTER>, this means press the ENTER or RETURN key (─┘) on the keyboard.
<filename> refers to a file specification as explained in the DOS Manual,
section 1-5. 'xxx' means a number.
Choices at the MAIN MENU can be made in practically any way you
choose. For instance you can:
o 1) Hit one of the <F>unction keys on the left side of the keyboard.
o 2) Type the number of your choice and hit <ENTER>.
o 3) Type the CAPITOLIZED key word in the menu (upper or lower case)
and then hit <ENTER>.
o 4) Use the arrow keys on the numeric keypad. When you hit <ENTER> the
choice indicated with the arrow () will be selected.
o 5) If you want to LOAD or SAVE a *BANNER* file you have created, at
the Main Menu you can type LOAD (or SAVE) "<filename>"<ENTER>; 3 (or
4) <ENTER>; <F3> (or <F4>); or SAVE (or LOAD) <ENTER>.
~
Your *BANNER* can be most any normal key you can type from the
keyboard, from ASCII 1 to 127. See the BASIC manual, section G for an
explanation. The characters from 128 up are not available, since *BANNER* uses
a table stored in permanent memory that only goes up to 127. Certain
characters, like No. 1 () or No. 2 () or No. 14 () cannot be typed from the
keyboard, or the *BANNER* editor. Using a word-processor to write your
*BANNER*'s might allow special PC characters in your file. Use .BAN as the
extension. MYFILE.BAN can be loaded by typing LOAD"MYFILE" in *BANNER*.
There are only three characters from 1-127 that will not be displayed
as some sort of screen character: No. 13, No. 10, and No. 94. No. 13 is the
carriage return, (<ENTER>) which ends your line. No. 10 is the line feed
character, which breaks your line into two lines! No. 94 (^), the caret, has a
special meaning to *BANNER*. This is how you change the colors on the screen!
*BANNER* can display any color combination--including flashing--
possible with the color adaptor. The caret character is used in combination
with a hexadecimal value to make what your color adaptor sees as a screen
attribute. Don't worry! You don't have to learn hexadecimal to use *BANNER*.
When you use the *BANNER* editor there is a set of colors at the bottom of the
screen, and the hex digit that makes them up. Just hit the <F> key and the
color will be in your *BANNER* !
~
╔═══════════ *BANNER* color shorthand and how to do it! ════════════╗
║ ┌── C O L O R S: ───┐ Form: ^BF : B=BACKGROUND, F=FOREGROUND. ║
║ │ 0 BLACK 8 │ ║
║ │ 1 BLUE 9 │ Both F and B can be any number from 0-F. ║
║ │ 2 GREEN A │ ║
║ │ 3 CYAN B │ Values over 7 in BACKGROUND will create ║
║ │ 4 RED C │ flashing. ║
║ │ 5 MAGENTA D │ ║
║ │ 6 BROWN E │ Values over 7 in FOREGROUND make an ║
║ │ 7 WHITE F │ intensified version of the first 0-7. ║
╚══╧═══════════════════╧════════════════════════════════════════════╝
For example, say you want a BLUE character on a BLACK background.
BLACK is color 0, and BLUE is color 1. '^01' in your *BANNER* text will make
the letters following '^01' BLUE on BLACK. To make FLASHING BLUE on BLACK, you
would type '^81'. Here is a typical *BANNER* line:
10 >^01The IBM Personal Computer ^A4a tool for modern times. ^10EXCELSIOR.
'10 >' means this is line 10.'^01' makes 'The IBM Personal Computer'
come out BLUE on BLACK. '^A4' changes 'a tool for modern times' to FLASHING
RED on GREEN. Then '^10' displays 'EXCELSIOR.' as BLACK on BLUE.
You can get a short onscreen summary of the color numbers by typing
?COL<ENTER> at COMMAND? level, or @?COL<ENTER> on a blank line while editing.
~
*BANNER* DOT COMMANDS.
The way you change from full-screen mode to scrolling mode or pause
the display is with *BANNER* dot commands. This means that a dot is the FIRST
character on the line. *BANNER* text cannot be mixed with dot commands, but
you can enter several dot commands on one line.
Everything AFTER the command will be printed as described below:
o .B = *BANNER* mode. Screen is cleared, one line message will scroll to the
left.
o .W = Window mode. Message is written on full-screen. Only 30 characters
fill the screen. Messages less than 30 are padded with blanks, if
your line is over 30 letters, it will be chopped off. Color short-
hand (^BF) commands do not add to this count, in fact, every letter
could be specified a different color combination.
o .WU = Thirty characters scrolled UP the screen.
o .WD = Window is scrolled DOWN the screen.
o .WR = Window is written across the screen to the right.
~
*BANNER* DOT COMMANDS ** CONTINUED **
Other things that can be done during *BANNER*:
o .P xxx = Pause xxx after a line. .p 2000 will pause a second. This is a
single-precision value and can be most any number.
o .M xx = Write a regular sized text message on screen at line xx. 1-25 If
this message is less than 80 letters, *BANNER* will center it.
o .C ^BF = Used to specify the color for the message in .M above.
o .D xxx = Change the dots used to make up *BANNER* sized letters. Starts
out 2 (). Can be anything from 1-254. Others might be 219 (█),
or 220 (▄), or or 15 ().
o .L xx = Change the starting line for the *BANNER* scroll to the left
routine. Starts out (line) 11. Can be 10-19. The scrolling
*BANNER* can not be put at the top of the screen.
o .N ^BF = Change the screen attribute in the current *BANNER* window
without clearing the screen.
o .S xxx = Send xxx (1-254) spaces to *BANNER*. Clear out a line.
~
Here are some examples of the *BANNER* dot commands and what happens:
11 >.p 2000 .c^04 .m 20 "Its not over until its over."
The '11 >' says that this is line 11. The first character on this
line is a period, or dot, so this line will not be printed as a *BANNER*.
'.p' tells *BANNER* to pause and '2000' is the value to pause. This
will be about one second.
'.c' makes a new color for a STATIONARY message; in other words
standard text printed on the screen--NOT a *BANNER*. '^04' says that the next
stationary message will be printed RED on BLACK.
'.m' is the command to write a stationary message on the screen and
'20' will put the message on line 20. If the message that follows is less than
the screen width of 80, *BANNER* will center the message on the line. Yogi
Berra's comment will be printed RED on BLACK centered on line 20.
.d 219
Since there is no line number here, this line will be added to the
END of the *BANNER* text buffer.
'.d' will change the text character used to make up the large
*BANNER* letters. '219' is a filled box (█) so the letters will be bold.
*BANNER*'s default dot is 2 (), the smiling face.
~
*BANNER* EDITING.
The *BANNER* editor is a little like EDLIN with full-screen editing
capabilities. There are two modes: COMMAND? and EDIT.
In COMMAND mode the prompt COMMAND? is displayed and you can LIST and
PRINT(printer), LOAD and SAVE files, and INSERT and DELETE lines. After you
have Listed some lines, you can go to EDIT mode by hitting <ENTER> (─┘)
alone, and Edit the lines using the BASIC editing keys! If you just start
typing lines they will be added to the END of the text.
LISTING lines results in line numbering in the format: xx > where xx
is the line number. This is how the editor allows you to edit all over the
screen.
In EDIT mode, if you change a line NUMBER, the line that is there
when you press <ENTER> becomes the line you have changed it to, unless it is
numbered higher than 1+ the current number of lines. *BANNER* won't allow
lines that aren't consecutive, just like EDLIN.
Starting a blank line with @ in EDIT allows you to use all the
COMMAND?'s without returning to Command Mode.
Typing xxi> will INSERT a line at line number xx. xxd> will DELETE
line xx. A complete summary of these commands follows on the next pages.
To make sure a line is entered, hit the <End> key before <ENTER>.
In EDIT mode you can simply type in text and it will be added to the
*BANNER* buffer, which can hold 200 lines of text.
~
╔═══════════════════════ In COMMAND? mode: ══════════════════╗
║ xx,yy L = List lines xx to yy. ║
║ L = List all lines. ║
║ xx L = List xx to 12+ xx. ║
║ P or xx P or xx,yy P = Same as L but to the Printer. ║
║ xx,yy D = Delete lines xx to yy. ║
║ D = Delete all lines, start over. ║
║ xx D = Delete line xx. ║
║ (xx) I = Insert at end or from line xx ║
║ LOAD "<filename>" = Load from disk. ║
║ SAVE "<filename>" = Save to disk. ║
║ CLS = Clear screen. ║
║ <ENTER> = Start editing. ║
║ END or X = End editing session. ║
╔═════╩════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╩══════╗
║ In EDIT mode, (no prompts, just a cursor): ║
║ Typing any text without lines = Enter on highest line number. ║
║ xx > = Following text goes on line xx. ║
║ xxi> or xxI> = Insert a line at line xx. ║
║ xxd> or xxD> = Delete line xx. ║
║ <ENTER> or @ = Go back to COMMAND? mode. ║
╚═════════════════ @<command> = Do a COMMAND? from EDIT mode. ═════════╝
Think 'sort of like EDLIN!'
~
In the Editor, quick command summaries can be displayed from COMMAND?
mode by entering a ?. *BANNER* will then ask you what kind of help you want.
To shorten this, you can type:
? COM = Help with COMMANDS = @? COM
COMMAND? mode. ? COL = Help with color commands. = @? COL EDIT mode.
? DOT = Help with dot commands. = @? DOT
? ED = Help with editing commands. = @? ED
You may notice that *BANNER* doesn't display on lines 1 to 9. This is
due to the way the color adaptor and your 8088 microprocessor work with
display memory. In order to achieve the smooth scrolling of *BANNER* the video
actually has to be turned off while the main processor moves the *BANNER* one
character to the left. When *BANNER* is through, the video is quickly turned
back on, but in the process the top third of the screen gets blacked out. This
is why the *BANNER* background is always BLACK! If there were any other color
on the background you would see the blacking out of the screen. Any other way
of moving a third of the screen, which is what *BANNER* does many times in
80-character text mode, will either result in snow on the screen or an
unacceptably slow scroll.
(c) 1983 Martin Smith
310 Cinnamon Oak Lane COMPUSERVE 72155,1214 * SOURCE ST2259
Houston, Texas 77079 (713) 464-6737. 1/17/83
~