Text in Graphics 8?

[Wrathchild]

Proportional font looks so amazing on this old machine, because we never had it.

 

Here's something I did way back whilst at university that I termed 'Fancy Font Display Routine' which I'd used in looking to achieve something similar to the Paradroid 90 titles and then created a sort of TSR so the routine could be used from basic. If I recall right, I would most likely have followed a guide from a Page 6 magazine article on how that was done.

 

If you boot the atr with basic enabled then load the "EGFFDR.BAS" file, this gives a simple example using colours.

However I have checked that if the graphics mode is changed from 31 to 24 ( gr.15 to gr.8 ) then this shows that if colour 3 is used then a hi-rez font would work fine.

 

A utility program I've played with recently is GLDC Font Creator and would recommend it as the output it generates could easily be incorporate into something like this or 1NG's work.

ffdr.zip

PDWORK.XEX

[+Stephen]

 

Here's something I did way back whilst at university that I termed 'Fancy Font Display Routine' which I'd used in looking to achieve something similar to the Paradroid 90 titles and then created a sort of TSR so the routine could be used from basic. If I recall right, I would most likely have followed a guide from a Page 6 magazine article on how that was done.

 

If you boot the atr with basic enabled then load the "EGFFDR.BAS" file, this gives a simple example using colours.

However I have checked that if the graphics mode is changed from 31 to 24 ( gr.15 to gr.8 ) then this shows that if colour 3 is used then a hi-rez font would work fine.

 

A utility program I've played with recently is GLDC Font Creator and would recommend it as the output it generates could easily be incorporate into something like this or 1NG's work.

Very cool - thanks for also providing the source (and also for properly commenting it!). Cool how you have provided entry routines for both BASIC and ML.

[+MrFish]

Here's something I did way back whilst at university that I termed 'Fancy Font Display Routine' which I'd used in looking to achieve something similar to the Paradroid 90 titles and then created a sort of TSR so the routine could be used from basic. If I recall right, I would most likely have followed a guide from a Page 6 magazine article on how that was done.

 

If you boot the atr with basic enabled then load the "EGFFDR.BAS" file, this gives a simple example using colours.

However I have checked that if the graphics mode is changed from 31 to 24 ( gr.15 to gr.8 ) then this shows that if colour 3 is used then a hi-rez font would work fine.

 

A utility program I've played with recently is GLDC Font Creator and would recommend it as the output it generates could easily be incorporate into something like this or 1NG's work.

 

Nice, and quite fast in BASIC (although it doesn't work in Turbo-BASIC XL -- maybe hitting some forbidden memory locations).

 

It'd be nice to see it adapted to draw at Graphics 8 resolution, pixel for pixel (half color clock width); although I guess that really wasn't your initial intention.

 

It almost works for artifacted colors on NTSC, but misses a few pixels here and there.

 

Thanks for sharing...

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by MrFish

[Wrathchild]

Turbo Basic XL is itself installing in the memory above DOS and so yes there is a conflict.

Ideally it could be re-targeted for the top of RAM and then adjusts MEMTOP downward accordingly.

But then there's an issue there in that the screen is probably already allocated and so would need re-establishing.

 

Question then, as the AUTORUN.SYS is already taken, is TB-XL setup to chain another file?

If so then the FFDR routines can remain in the lower memory and hopefully the TB would adjust the 'basic program' memory area up accordingly?

 

The NTSC pixel issue, is that down to the design of the font? This is purposely setup as pixel pairs as targeting the Gr.15 four colour mode.
As seen the "AND #$FF" mask resulting in the yellow looks more solid that the "AND #$55" and "AND #$AA" masks giving colours 1 & 2.

If that's the case wouldn't a hi-res font result in a mix of the three colours? If that was the case then using just the Colour 3 and a doubled-pixel designed font would be the sensible approach?

[+MrFish]

Turbo Basic XL is itself installing in the memory above DOS and so yes there is a conflict.

Ideally it could be re-targeted for the top of RAM and then adjusts MEMTOP downward accordingly.

But then there's an issue there in that the screen is probably already allocated and so would need re-establishing.

 

If it's possible to make it relocatable, I always think using a string for storage is the best way to go.

 

 

Question then, as the AUTORUN.SYS is already taken, is TB-XL setup to chain another file?

If so then the FFDR routines can remain in the lower memory and hopefully the TB would adjust the 'basic program' memory area up accordingly?

 

In Turbo-BASIC XL it's not a problem because a program has the ability to load binaries with the BLOAD or BRUN commands.

 

 

The NTSC pixel issue, is that down to the design of the font? This is purposely setup as pixel pairs as targeting the Gr.15 four colour mode.

As seen the "AND #$FF" mask resulting in the yellow looks more solid that the "AND #$55" and "AND #$AA" masks giving colours 1 & 2.

If that's the case wouldn't a hi-res font result in a mix of the three colours? If that was the case then using just the Colour 3 and a doubled-pixel designed font would be the sensible approach?

 

Well, artifacting only comes into play with NTSC when a composite connection is used. My setup is switchable between composite and svideo with the push of a button. I was just seeing how things would look with the current font definition.

 

You're right, though; I hadn't looked at how the fonts were defined. So it's already possible to make fonts for graphics 8 to take advantage of the resolution.

 

[ac.tomo]

Just out of the idea for extra information, I originally learned how to write gr. 0 text to a gr.8 screen from Page-6 magazine issue 8 (the 1st issue I ever bought).

[+x=usr(1536)]

Just out of the idea for extra information, I originally learned how to write gr. 0 text to a gr.8 screen from Page-6 magazine issue 8 (the 1st issue I ever bought).

 

I remember that listing as well! Used it in a few graphing programs that I wrote, mainly for labelling the axes.

[kenjennings]

 

I remember that listing as well! Used it in a few graphing programs that I wrote, mainly for labelling the axes.

 

That is pretty close to the behavior of the machine language routine at the start of the post.

 

(The ML routine allows flexibility in the column number being greater than the number of columns on the screen. This wraps the write location around the screen to subsequent scan lines which permits rendering subscripts. )

[dmsc]

Hi!

 

Gr.8 is pretty nice for a proportional font. I used that for Jim Slide XL

 

It features Text with two pixels width horizontally for better readbility and has narrow i and l etc. So it has not only 40 char per line. see the attached picture. It is rendered in realtime and kind of fast. If you are interested in this you can have the source code.

Good font!

 

I extracted the font, compressed it and wrote a little text drawing demo, see attached XEX file, not really optimized but complete in 730 bytes.

 

Source is a little rough, it probably can be optimized a lot.

fdraw.xex

fdraw.s

[1NG]

I extracted the font, compressed it and wrote a little text drawing demo, see attached XEX file, not really optimized but complete in 730 bytes.

 

The real programmers fun is converting and doing own programming :-) even if the original source is offered for free...

I like that spirit a lot