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Re: Extending Turbo Vision with graphics?

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In comp.lang.pascal.borland message <f50d0908-5afb-4331-b86f-805c875885b
8@googlegroups.com>, Thu, 26 Dec 2013 09:27:58, Jim Leonard
<MobyGamer@gmail.com> posted:

>I know this is a longshot as this group is nearly dead, but I have to
>try asking:  I will be writing a menu front-end that must run on any
>DOS-based PC (even 808x systems, this is for a museum project) and
>would like to avoid writing an entire CUI framework from scratch.
>Turbo Vision obviously comes to mind, however one of the requirements
>is that, while running in text mode is ok, on VGA/SVGA systems the
>front-end should also display a bitmap that changes as the user selects
>a new item.
>
>I have seen code that tries to extend Turbo Vision to run in graphics
>mode, so that it looks/feels identical to text mode but also lets you
>display graphics.  I have also seen complete Turbo Vision replacements
>such as GraphicVision, but those have no text mode equivalent (and IIRC
>require a 386).  So far the closest solution has been something like
>this:  http://aeinc.ru/gtv.php  but the documentation is all in Russian
>which I do not read.

I looked there, and almost all seemed to be in English.  Could you give
the URL of the actual Russian that you would like to read?  The browser
Firefox has a convenient add-on translator - the icon is a simple red
letter "T" in a serif font - which (for you) I tested on the Russian
Wikipedia page for "Banana".  The results seemed reasonably
comprehensibly and agreed with what little I know about Bananas.  I
expect it is the same translator as at <http://translate.google.com/>.

>Does anyone have any suggestions on how to (very simply) extend Turbo
>Vision to graphics mode?  Is it as simple as hooking where the
>80x25/43/50 raw screen data is and then redrawing that in graphics
>mode, or is that not feasible?  Is there a prewritten library that I'm
>unaware of that fits the bill?

I certainly found it easy enough to get the screen data, encoded in
"8-bit ASCII".  I could possibly do it again.  But I expect you know all
about that part of it.  IIRC, it is also easy enough to read (and alter)
the font table.

Perhaps you do not need the full TV GUI?  If you can use a fixed box or
boxes in which menus appear, and use that font table, it could
substantially reduce the task of providing what you need.

FYI, I still have an Amstrad PPC640 running DOS 3.3 and TP5, with
2*720KB FDD.  This networked WinXP machine can handle those discs.

-- 
 (c) John Stockton, nr London UK. E-addr via Homepage. Turnpike v6.05  MIME.
   <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/>  TP/BP/Delphi/&c., FAQqy topics & links;
   <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/clpb-faq.txt>    RAH Prins : c.l.p.b mFAQ.

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Thread

Extending Turbo Vision with graphics? Jim Leonard <MobyGamer@gmail.com> - 2013-12-26 09:27 -0800
  Re: Extending Turbo Vision with graphics? Dr J R Stockton <reply1300@merlyn.demon.co.uk.invalid> - 2013-12-27 19:31 +0000
    Re: Extending Turbo Vision with graphics? Stefan Strobel <St.Strobel@arcor.de> - 2014-01-20 18:50 +0100
  Re: Extending Turbo Vision with graphics? Marco van de Voort <marcov@toad.stack.nl> - 2013-12-29 15:57 +0000

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