DarkView 2.10 Program Documentation Coded by Tesla ~~~~~~~~~~~ Disclaimer: If you don't like the code, don't complain. I happen to think I'm a horrible programmer (good style, tight code, but no experience) so please redirect all complaints to NUL. This was an exercise to prove that even a horrible programmer can make a better ANSi viewer than most of the ones out there. -þ- With the addition of what is probably the best VGA ANSi viewing mode in the scene today and support for Acid, Ice, Tribe, Union, and DARK file comments, DARKVIEW is now the only ANSi viewer you'll ever need. RIP support will be forthcoming in the next release, and will be 100% original code. (Sorry, but Cap'n Crunch can't do the RIP support for *EVERY* viewer in the scene today.) Once the RIP support is in, DARKVIEW will do everything any other viewer will do, and look better doing it. Upon completion I intend to release the source code to the public so everyone can benefit from this little programming exercise. -þ- What's New ---------- 2.10 ~~~~ þ Added a pop-up window that tells you when the hard-drive is grinding away reading in a file. On 286 machines this took a while and people thought (if only for a second or two) that perhaps the program was frozen. The pop-up window should remind these would-be speed demons that it's their computer that's grinding to a halt, not the program. This means you, Carnifex! þ DARKVIEW now looks for DARKVIEW.MOD in the directory from which the executable was run, not the current directory. This means that if you're running DARKVIEW from in your path, it will still be able to locate and play the background MOD. þ Fixed a bug in the ANSi reading routines that crashed your system if the file was only one line long. Hey wait, the ANSi engine wasn't even in the last revision so no one ever saw the bug! Uhhh... ferget it... þ From the file selection screen you can now press F4 to log a different drive or directory. þ Changed the "Choose a sound source" menu to a lightbar. Looks more K-Rad. Same thing with the view mode toggle (F3). When there were only three view modes, you could live with a toggle. With four modes I spent more time toggling than viewing. The toggle has been replaced with a lightbar menu. þ Introducing a feature no one else has had the brains to think of! By pressing the '+' and '-' keys while viewing in 320x200 mode, you can now zoom in and out on the ANSi image! Theoretically you can zoom in until one ANSi block takes up the whole screen (I've done it), but I guess there's not much point. Ctl-F1 will shrink the image horizontally, Ctl-F2 will stretch it horizontally. Alt-F1 will shrink it vertically, and Alt-F2 will stretch it horizontally. Bottom line: you can view an ANSi with absolutely any aspect ratio you please. Oh yeah, pressing the left and right arrow keys will scroll the entire image left and right. * Disclaimer: I know every 13-year-old coder geek will be itching to prove his lameness by putting this into his next viewer. It'll be interesting to watch next month's packs to see which ANSi-weenies choose to prove my hypothesis. (Get yer own ideas, kids.) þ Hannibal the Cannibal's DeathBlow VGA was too good to go to waste, so it's been included as a "backdrop" in the 320x200x256 ANSi display mode. People spend so much time designing an interface for the file selection screen, but the second they switch to 320x200 mode they assault your eyes with a screen that's 90% black. Naturally there's room for a little eye candy there. þ Fixed a bug in the "pop-up" menu screens routines. Duh, you've gotta FreeMem after ya GetMem. Huh-huh-huh. þ Fixed two bugs in the file tagging/selection routines. Once you were past the first page of files, the tagging stopped working. Very dumb bug. Very fixed. þ Added support for SAUCE. Although most people are convinced this was just a ploy to get myself greeted on the ACiD VMB, I like to think I added it so every artist gets their due credit no matter what viewer their art is viewed in. (You buy that crap?!?! More greets, I want more greets!) þ Added support for Ice artists. There's little reason for only Acid members to get credit where credit is due. Artist names have been hard-coded into the viewer based on their initials. DARKVIEW will try a "best-guess" approach based on the initials of the artist, provided the file extension is '.ICE'. þ Oh yeah, added a cutsie 320x200 viewing mode. The palette and color selection are table based. (Yes, I'm lazy, but it also makes DARKVIEW several times faster than it would otherwise be.) þ Changed the look of the menu screen -- big deal. Thanks do go to Shrapnel, however, for doing a cool font. þ Added a complete ANSi engine. You can now scroll back and forth through an ANSi the same way you would a text file. I promised this would be done, and after an hour or two of coding, it was. Maximum file length for text and ANSi files is 400 lines. 2.00 ~~~~ þ NEWS FLASH!!!! At 2:00AM the night the pack was going out, we decided to scrap the old ANSi viewer and use my text viewer engine instead. This means that the ANSi support is PRETTY DAMN cruddy. File display is accomplished through the ANSI.SYS driver, and there's no support for scrollback. This is due to time contraints, I don't like releasing code that's this lame. Keep in mind that this doesn't reflect on my coding skills -- the true function of this viewer shows when you view *.LIT files. The next revision will definitely have the ANSi engine in full working order. þ MOD support! Full credit goes to Mark J Cox for MOD-OBJ. I have neither the ability nor the desire to code a tracker when there are programs of this quality in the public domain. þ There's now a K-R/´D status line at the bottom of the text viewing display. The nifty status bar should keep the TV generation interested while they read. þ The file selection screen looks almost completely different (thank God!) The interface is improved and looks pretty damn good if you ask me. Thanks to Vital Substance for doing that "DARK" logo for me, although the finished product looks nothing like what he gave me! þ F1 now pops up a help screen. You know, for those people too lazy to read the status line. Besides, it outlines the previously undocumented (though still present, even in version 1.00) feature of multiple file tagging and sequential display. þ F2 now lets you change the filespec to whatever you want. Of course, only DARK lit work will include the artist name and only files of the extension "*.lit", "*.doc", "*.asc", and "*.drk" will have a meaningful comment. This feature always existed, but the default file extensions were hard-coded into the program cause I didn't have time to code the "dialog box" routine. þ F3 now toggles between 80x25, 80x28, and 80x50 viewing modes. This is a feature that was stripped from v1.00 to help quash any potential bugs. I had to rewrite all the display routines by hand for it, but it's in there! þ F10 now displays the credits. This was more to satisfy the people who contributed to the viewer than to satisfy my own ego. þ When viewing a bunch of tagged files in order, you can now press the left arrow key to go back to a previously viewed file, or ESC to return to the menu. þ F1 will pop up a help screen while viewing a text file. þ Added a neat-o-mosquit-o smooth scroll when you quit the viewer. þ Fixed a problem in the beta release which caused choosing "No Sound" to crash your computer. You can blame Mark for this one. þ Increased the maximum text file size to 1000 lines. Lines above this limit will not be viewable. After all, how much lit is over 1000 lines?!? Also cleaned up these routines to be more tolerant to long files. ÚÄÄ - ú . ÜÜ Drink more Beer ܲ| ßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßß|