GETTING TO GRIPS WITH GRAPHICS
For this issue I thought that I would look at
graphics. I have been putting this off for some time, not because it
is hard to write about, but because it would take up far more room
than I am allowed by the Editor. I will tell you about the basic
modes but I may not go into as much detail as you would like.
Graphic modes are divided into two types, text and
graphics. The basic screens range from the three text modes of
GRAPHICS 0, 1 and 2 and from the low resolution (chunky graphics) of
GRAPHICS 3 to the high resolution screen of GRAPHICS 8. Believe it
or not, all these screens are the same. They are made up of tiny
dots (pixels) and are 320 pixels wide by 192 pixels high. The only
difference is how the computer handles the screen. For instance,
GRAPHICS 0 uses characters that are 8 by 8 pixels square. Thus 320
divided by 8 gives 40 characters per line and 192 divided by 8 gives
24 lines. You can work out mode 1 (16 by 8) and mode 2 (16 by 16).
THE TEXT MODES
GRAPHICS 0
This, though you may not think it, is a
specialised screen. It is designed for the input of command lines
and will display the full character set. The default colour of blue
is not mandatory. It can be changed, along with the border colour,
but the characters will only take a lighter or darker shade of the
screen colour. You can make characters invisible by setting their
colour to that of the background. The characters can be placed
anywhere on the screen by using the editing characters. These
characters, e.g. TAB, ARROWS, INSERT, can only be utilised in mode
0. I have included a small program (Listing 1) to illustrate their
uses.
GRAPHICS 1 & 2.
These differ from mode 0, not only by the fact
that the characters are bigger, but that they have a text window
(the four lines at the bottom of the screen) which is actually mode
0. The main part is termed the text screen. The normal PRINT command
will place characters in the window, but you will needs to use a
special device specifier to print to the screen. This is done with
PRINT #6;. There are four types of printable characters, normal
lower and upper case and inverted lower and upper case but in these
two modes upper case only appears on screen and the type of
character defines the colour of that character. Listing 2 should
demonstrate this clearly and show you how to change the colours of
the text.
Now look closely at Listing 3. You will see that
the original screen is GRAPHICS 1 with a text window but, for the
next example, I needed to extend the screen by getting rid of the
text window. To do this I set up a GRAPHICS 1 + 16,
but to keep the text I added 32 (making a total of 49). Using a
GRAPHICS 49 command I was able to get rid of the window and keep my
text. For some reason this is very seldom, if ever, used.
POKING AROUND.
In both modes, the cursor can be made to disappear
by a simple POKE (POKE 752, 1). Other POKEs of interest are 82 and 83
which set the left and right hand margins respectively. The text
screen can be extended by adding 16 to the graphic mode, eg GRAPHICS
1 - 16 or GRAPHICS 17, again shown in the listings.
Probably by now you will know that if you leave
the computer for several minutes without using the keyboard the
screen colours will begin to change. This is done automatically to
stop an image being burnt into the phosphor on the screen. This can
be a nuisance when you use joysticks only, but it can be stopped by
POKE 77,0 during the running of your program.
The two text modes can be used for graphics by
redefining the character set. This is done by making up your own
data and storing it in a safe area of RAM then telling the computer
where to look for this data each time a key is pressed. Normally
location 756 holds a number which, when multiplied by 256 will point
to the start of the character data. Just pick a part of RAM evenly
divisible by 256 then POKE 765, RAM/256. Just to see this in action.
POKE 765 with any random number and list one of the programs. The
garbage you will see is because of any random bits of data stored in
the location you picked.
Next issue I will have a quick look at the graphic
modes 3-7, nothing spectacular, just the basics.
A USEFUL TIP
Before I go, I must pass on a good tip from Len
Lawson. If you need only DOS.SYS on a disk (when you wish to only
boot up, not use the DUP.SYS) you can use the following without
going into DOS to use option H.
OPEN #1, 8, 0, "D:DOS.SYS":CLOSE #1
IN CLOSING
Recently, I have been receiving several letters
asking questions about Atari computing. I can only reply to those
that have enclosed a SAE, otherwise the answer will appear in this
column ... sometime! So, if you are in a hurry for an answer. Write
to me, as always, at P.O.BOX 123, BELFAST, BT10 OTB.
I hope to be going to the next ATARI show in
April, mainly wandering around the exhibition stands, so perhaps I
will meet you there (large hint, Stan!).
Listing 1
|
|
|
 |
Listing 2
|
|
|
|
Listing 3
|
|
|
|
top
