ACiD Productions(tm) Acquisition Enhanced File Viewer Coding by The Hit M N of ACiD Screen and Layout by Beastie of ACiD Phont by Beastie and RaD Man Modem Simulation Routines by Tasmaniac of ACiD Documentation and Update History of ACiD Productions ACiD View By The Hit Man and RaD Man of ACiD Productions(tm) Current version of ACiD View 1 50 03-01-1994 21 47 Introduction to ACiD View In the past ACiD had promoted an ANSI viewer that was neglected by its author In response to this we have taken the necessary steps to write a new viewer that has a simple interface and some new features Like the prototype version there will be no extraneous interfaces or menus and the viewer will provide more ANSI viewing enjoyment than before As was before there will be no need to make use of a third party RIP viewer due to a built-in driver Features Full File Description and Artist Initial Identification Now supporting our very own special SAUCE Semi Gooey Menu System Command Line Viewing Variable Speed ANSI Viewing Modem-Simulation for both ANSI and RIP Viewing File Masking Drive and Directory switching Level 0-1 RIP Viewing Fully-Features ANSI Scroll Back in several different video modes ANSI Viewing in 80x25 or 80x50 80x43 text modes ANSI Viewing in 320x200x256 (Normal or Wide) graphics modes ANSI Viewing in 640x480x16 graphics mode Supports up to 2000 files in one directory ACiD View Default Setup (INI) What ACiD View Displays ACiD View will display ANSI screens in several different video modes These modes include the default 80x25 and others such as the 80x43 80x50 text modes 320x200x256 MCGA modes as well as the sought after 640x480x16 high-resolution VGA mode ACiD View displays most low level (0-1) RIP screens Although it will show all of the RIPs presented in the Acquisition it may not display some of the other RIPS you own This is due to the fact that some of the higher level RIP commands have not yet been implemented ACiD View is capable of displaying ANSI or RIP files at sim- ulated modem speeds To ensure that these files display at the same speed on all computers the timer interrupt is altered This can create a possibility for problems while running ACiD View under a multitasking operating system such as DesqView In order to prevent this problem these modem simulation routines have been disabled within all multitasking environ- ments ACiD View Functions F1 Quick-Help Brief description of function keys F2 Scroll Back Toggles Scrolled viewing ON OFF Default is OFF While ON you can scroll back ANSI in 80x25 80x43 80x50 and 320x200 Modes F3 Toggle Speed Emulates several different bps rates 38 400 19 200 14 400 12 000 9600 4800 2400 and 1200 bps Default is NO DELAY If you want to display an ansimation or RIP at an alternate bps rate you can customize the viewing speed by pressing the (+) or (-) keys to increase or decrease the speed respectively F4 Display Mode Selects the video mode that the selected ANSI is to be viewed in 80x50 Display - If you have a VGA card this will compress the default 8x16 font into an 8x8 font and display the screen This feature is nice when you want to display a big ANSI on one screen 320x200 MCGA - ACiD View will display ANSIs in two seperate types of MCGA modes Normal and Wide 640x480 VGA - VGA or better is required for this feature Display Mode Description Flags 25 Line Standard 80x25 Text Mode AB S 50 Line 80x43 80x50 Compressed Text Mode ABES 320x200 320x200x256 MCGA Graphics Mode A SV 320 WID 320x200x256 MCGA Graphics Mode Wide A SV 640x480 640x480x16 VGA Graphics Mode A V RIP 640x350x16 EGA Graphics Mode BE R Flags A = Ansimated Viewing Supported B = Modem Simulation Supported E = EGA Required S = Scroll Back Supported V = VGA Required R = RipScrip Graphics Supported F5 File-Masking Selects files within a specified file mask Alt+A Ansimation Forces the ansimation flag of the highlighted file Use this option when you know the ANSI you want to view contains ansimation and is not flagged so This option only affects the 320x200x256 modes The ACIDVIEW INI File ACiD View now includes an INItialization file which will allows you to set up your preferred defaults upon the loading of the viewer ACIDVIEW INI can be edited with virtually any text editor of your choice While editing the file please note that each line is interpreted as a command unless a semi-colon precedes it Only the information within the quotes or after the equal character should be modified Follow the instructions for each entry as shown in ACIDVIEW INI What is SAUCE Recipe for SAUCE Chef cuisinier Tasmaniac ACiD Maitre d h tel Rad Man ACiD ANSi s used to be just ANSi s pictures were just pictures loaders were just loaders and quite frankly every file was just as plain tasting as every other This is about to change however because ACiD has decided to give their files an extra je-ne-sais-quoi In reality we ll be adding SAUCE to every file you can imagine Now before we thoroughly confuse you let us explain what we are doing here SAUCE stands for Standard Architecture for Universal Comment Extensions Although originally intended for personal use in ANSi s and RIP screens early in the developement of EFI (Extended File Information) it was decided that EFI should be extended to have support for more than just ANSi and RIP screens Our brainchild was born and the specs were designed The only aspect left undecided was the name and after rejecting some very funny candidates SAUCE was unanimously chosen This leads us to the big question in the sky What is sauce SAUCE is a universal process to incorporate a full description for any type of file The most outstanding aspect of this concept is that you have access to the complete file name the file s title the creation date the creator of the file the group that the creator is employed by and much much more A full explanation on how you can implement SAUCE is described at the end of this document in the PLATES (Programming Language Architecture To Extract SAUCE) section Although you can create your own programs to implement SAUCE to your files we recommend that you use the SPOON EXE program to ensure a greater universal compatibility There is a minor stipulation however in that complete specs to SAUCE are not available Thus SPOON EXE will not be available this month but will be out in the near future SAUCE already supports a plethora of filetypes (See PLATES) If you have a need for the SAUCE specifications please contact us before you make the changes yourself We will accomodate your needs as soon as possible After all SAUCE is designed to become a standard and if people change the specs without allowing us to make a complete update there will be no standard In the event that we change SAUCE we will quickly release a public update which will most definately include an improved and updated SPOON EXE SAUCE has advantages over any other system in use Each description will be added to the file and will provide a file description no matter what computer it is used for SAUCE however also provides a back compatibility that uses a file with descriptions for those files that do NOT already have a SAUCE description Processing in this manner is fully implemented in SPOON EXE and one can extract embedded SAUCE to this data file and add SAUCE to files from this data file PLATES ------ Let us begin with a description of the record layouts used The record layouts and code examples are in a varieted pascal pseudo code and should be transferrable enough to implement in most other programming languages For ease of reading the examples assume that the file is cor- rect and that no error-checking need be included How rigorous you check for errors is completely up to you and will most likely depend on the file type you are describing SAUCE RECORD ------------ This portion of the documentation is about the SAUCE record The SAUCE record describes the file in short and provides other information not included in the SAUCE record itself A sauce record is _EXACTLY_ 128 bytes in size Fieldname Name of the field Size Size of the field in BYTES Type Type of data This can be BYTE One byte unsigned numeric value (0 to 255) WORD Two byte unsigned numeric value (0 to 65535) INTEGER Two byte signed numeric value (-32768 to 32767) LONG Four byte signed numeric value (-2147483648 to 2147483647) CHARACTER One byte ASCII value Longer character fields are padded with spaces It is _NOT_ a PASCAL string (with a leading length byte) and it s _NOT_ a C-Style string (with a trailing nul-byte) A 10 byte character field holding the text ANSI would look like this ANSI Numeric fields should be zero when not used character fields should be all spaces when not used V# SAUCE Version number This indicates the version of SAUCE when the field was implemented Description Complete description of the field !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No fields are REQUIRED to be filled in except for ID Version FileSize DataType and FileType !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FieldName Size Type V# Description --------- ---- --------- -- ----------- ID 5 Character 00 SAUCE Identification This should be equal to SAUCE or the record is not a valid SAUCE record Version 2 Character 00 Version number of SAUCE Current version is 00 As new features are added to the specifications of SAUCE this version number will change Future versions SHOULD remain compatible with version 00 only ADDING on the specifications it is however not unlikly that this compatibility is impossible to maintain but this is of no concern now Title 35 Character 00 Title of the file Author 20 Character 00 Name or handle of the creator of the file Group 20 Character 00 Name of the group the creator is employed by Date 8 Character 00 Date the file was created This date is in the format CCYYMMDD (Century year month day) There is a good reason why the date is in this format but it s not used in version 00 of SAUCE It will be used in a future version of SAUCE FileSize 4 Long 00 Original filesize NOT including any information of SAUCE DataType 1 Byte 00 Type of Data (See DATATYPES further on) FileType 1 Byte 00 Type of File (See DATATYPES further on) TInfo1 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 1 (See DATATYPES) When used this field holds informative values Any program using SAUCE should not rely on these values being correct or filled in TInfo2 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 2 (See DATATYPES) TInfo3 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 3 (See DATATYPES) TInfo4 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 4 (See DATATYPES) Comments 1 Byte 00 Number of Comment lines (See COMMENTS) Filler 23 Byte Reserved bytes An Example PASCAL record looks like this TYPE SAUCERec = RECORD ID Array 1 5 of Char Version Array 1 2 of Char Title Array 1 35 of Char Author Array 1 20 of Char Group Array 1 20 of Char Date Array 1 8 of Char FileSize Longint DataType Byte FileType Byte TInfo1 Word TInfo2 Word TInfo3 Word TInfo4 Word Comments Byte Filler Array 1 23 of Char END An Example C record looks like this typedef SAUCEREC char ID 5 char Version 2 char Title 35 char Author 20 char Group 20 char Date 8 signed long FileSize unsigned char DataType unsigned char FileType unsigned int TInfo1 unsigned int TInfo1 unsigned int TInfo1 unsigned int TInfo1 unsigned char Comments char Filler 23 SAUCEREC DATATYPES --------- DataType and FileType hold the information needed to determine what type of file it is There are 5 DataTypes these are (with their respective numeric values) 0) None Undefined filetype you could use this to add SAUCE information to personal datafiles needed by programs but not having any other meaning 1) Character Any character based file Examples are ASCII ANSi and RIP 2) Graphics Any bitmap graphic file Examples are GIF LBM and PCX 3) Vector Any vector based graphic file Examples are DXF and CAD files 4) Sound Any sound related file Examples are samples MOD files and MIDI None ---- When using the None datatype you should have FileType set to zero also This is a compatibility issue as it s not unlikely the None datatype will have filetypes in the future Character --------- When using the Character datatype you have following filetypes available 0) ASCII Plain text file with no formatting codes or color codes TInfo1 is used for the width of the file TInfo2 is used to hold the number of lines in the file 1) ANSi ANSi file With ANSi color codes and cursor positioning TInfo1 is used for the width of the file TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines in the file 2) ANSiMation ANSi Animation With ANSi color codes and cursor positioning While an ANSi file can also have animated sequences there is a clear distinction While an ANSi may or may not have a beginning animated sequence introducing the group or artist the rest is just a sequence of colored characters An ANSiMation on the other hand is a more like a text mode cartoon TInfo1 is used for the width of the file TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines the ANSiMation was created for A program using SAUCE may use these two values to switch to the appropriate video mode 3) RIP Remote Imaging Protocol (RIP) graphics file TInfo1 holds the width (should be 640) TInfo2 holds the height (should be 350) TInfo3 holds the number of bits per pixel (should be 4) 4) PCBoard File with PCBoard style @X color codes and @ macro s and ANSi codes TInfo1 is used for the width of the file TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines in the file 5) AVATAR A file with AVATAR and ANSi color codes and cursor positioning Graphics -------- For all graphics types TInfo1 holds width of the image TInfo2 holds the Height of the image and TInfo3 holds the number of bits per pixel (a 256 colour image would have 8 bits per pixel a TrueColor image would have 24) Following Graphics filetypes are available 0) GIF (CompuServ Graphics Interchange format) 1) PCX (ZSoft Paintbrush PCX format) 2) LBM IFF (DeluxePaint LBM IFF format) 3) TGA (Targa Truecolor) 4) FLI (Autodesk FLI animation file) 5) FLC (Autodesk FLC animation file) 6) BMP (Windows Bitmap) 7) GL (Grasp GL Animation) 8) DL (DL Animation) 9) WPG (Wordperfect Bitmap) Vector ------ Following Vector filetypes are available 0) DXF (CAD Data eXchange File) 1) DWG (AutoCAD Drawing file) 2) WPG (WordPerfect DrawPerfect vector graphics) Sound ----- Following sound filetypes are available 0) MOD (4 6 or 8 channel MOD NST file) 1) 669 (Renaissance 8 channel 669 format) 2) STM (Future Crew 4 channel ScreamTracker format) 3) S3M (Future Crew variable channel ScreamTracker3 format) 4) MTM (Renaissance variable channel MultiTracker Module) 5) FAR (Farandole composer module) 6) ULT (UltraTracker module) 7) AMF (DMP DSMI Advanced Module Format) 8) DMF (Delusion Digital Music Format (XTracker)) 9) OKT (Oktalyser module) 10) ROL (AdLib ROL file (FM)) 11) CMF (Creative Labs FM) 12) MIDI (MIDI file) 13) SADT (SAdT composer FM Module) 14) VOC (Creative Labs Sample) 15) WAV (Windows Wave file) 16) SMP8 (8 Bit Sample TInfo1 holds sampling rate) 17) SMP8S (8 Bit sample stereo TInfo1 holds sampling rate) 18) SMP16 (16 Bit sample TInfo1 holds sampling rate) 19) SMP16S (16 Bit sample stereo TInfo1 holds sampling rate) COMMENTS -------- The comment block is an addition to the SAUCE record It holds up to 255 lines of additional information Each line 64 characters wide When the Comments field is not zero it holds the number of additional comment lines are available A single comment line is 64 characters long Like the character fields in the SAUCE record it is padded with spaces and has no leading length byte or trailing null-byte The comment block is preceded with a 5 character identification mark This identification mark is COMNT SAUCE IN FILES -------------- A file with SAUCE added to it Will look like this FILE DATA Actual file data As if it would be without SAUCE EOF MARKER EOF marker This will assure character files can easily determine the end of file COMMENT BLOCK Optional Comment block SAUCE RECORD SAUCE record The Comment block COMNT Comment block ID bytes COMMENTLINE 1 First comment line COMMENTLINE 2 Second comment line COMMENTLINE N n-th comment line n equals the Comments field in SAUCE record EXAMPLE CODE TO READ SAUCE -------------------------- Variables Byte Count Long FileSize file F Code Open_File(F) Open the file for read access FileSize = Size_of_file(F) Determine filesize Seek_file (F FileSize-128) Seek to start of SAUCE (Eof-128) Read_File (F SAUCE) Read the SAUCE record IF SAUCE ID= SAUCE THEN ID bytes match SAUCE IF SAUCE Comments 0 THEN Is there a comment block Seek_File(F FileSize-128-(SAUCE Comments*64)-5) Seek to start of Comment block Read_File(F CommentID) Read Comment ID IF CommentID= COMNT THEN Comment ID matches COMNT For Count=1 to SAUCE Comments Read all comment lines Read_File(F CommentLine) ENDFOR ELSE Invalid_Comment Non fatal No comment present ENDIF ENDIF ELSE Invalid_SAUCE No valid SAUCE record was found ENDIF SAUCE DATAFILE -------------- The full specifications of the SAUCE datafile are not ready yet INFORMATION OR UPGRADES ----------------------- If you have a need for additional information on SAUCE or need modifications you can contact me at these places Leave a message to TASMANIAC on any of these boards FUN-derbird BBS +32-50-620112 USR 16800 Dual +32-50-625717 ZyXEL 19200 End of Time +1-803-855-0783 USR 21600 Dual Channel Zer0 +1-714-532-5950 Pratical 14400 +1-714-532-5968 USR 16800 Dual Acquisition Viewer 1 50 1) ACiD View Control File support Added ACiD View will now load defaults from ACIDVIEW INI 2) Screen now displays the current directory 3) Drive switching now added ACiD View will show drives A - Z (Including FLOPPY SUBST RAM and other drives ) 4) Command line Viewing is now supported! (Type ACiDView ) 5) ND CHECK (NO DELAY mode w Error Checking) display speed added This speed is the same as NO DELAY except it checks if ANSIs con- tain lines with more than 255 characters per line Acquisition Viewer 1 40 1) Multitasking environment awareness implemented (ie DesqView and OS 2 ) 2) Modem simulation routines are now disabled when ACiD View is loaded under multitasking environments 3) Directory switching added Change directories simply by pressing the return key 4) File jumping and auto-sorting added ACiD View will now jump to the first file that begins with the character entered by the user 5) 640x480 viewing is now two times faster than version 1 32 320x200 Normal Wide have also been optimized for speed Acquisition Viewer 1 32 1) Major bug erradicated in file reading routines 2) Fixed the problem with the Viewer exiting if no files were found matching the default mask ACiDView will now simply display the normal interface with no files allowing you to MASK or exit until you specify a valid file mask 3) Fixed the key-reading loop with the 320x200 and 320x200 WIDE emu- lations when ScrollBack was turned off Acquisition Viewer 1 30 1) File Masking added allowing the user to select files within the mask 2) Added 320x200x256 ansimation mode 3) Added modem simulator which emulates user-defined bps rate 4) Minor bug corrected in the scroll back of large ANSIs 5) Removed slow panning upon exit 6) 640x480x16 now FULLY supports ansimations Small bug fixed Acquisition Viewer 1 20 1) Maximum number of files in one directory has been increased to 2 000 2) A bug in the RIP portion of the viewer which caused the colors of plotted objects to display improperly has been squashed 3) RIP code has been optimized for speed and it is now possible to abort the screens 4) Scrolled viewing has since been implemented and 320x200x256 MCGA display modes are now supported 5) The old font has been replaced with a new character set and a new interface has been added which features icons Bugs Did you find any Bugs If so contact me at the board below The End of TiME New Age World HeadQuarters CiD South Carolina Outpost PsychoSquad US HQ - HypernovA US HQ Anarchy PC US HQ - Taurus US HQ - Synergy Design US HQ Dust Dist - Future Crew Dist - VLA Dist - Imphobia Dist - DaRK Dist United States HeadQuarters for the Creativity Demo Net CDN SoundBoard Connection - Demo Productions Network - FEDNet One of the best PC Demo boards in the world Running PCBoard 15 0 totally customized PC Demos Music Grafix ANSI Support Staff Holy Water & The Hit M N USRobotics 21 6k Dual v Terbo 9600+ recommended - 8O3-855-O783 - Greetings go out to Holy Water New Age Hit Man says stop changing this greet Beastie ACiD Uibu t qsfuuz ojdf Corwin of Amber ACiD Baaaaah Baaahhh Fear MD One of these days RaD Man ACiD Will you please sto--I love you TinyZ Thanks for the internet help tuffguy Your Handle Your Group True command line viewing is here