Mr. Albert Baggetta Atari ST Computers 177 Adams Street Color Monitor Req. Agawam, MA 01001 (413) 786-8158 Shadow Letters By A. Baggetta Shadow Letters is a quick and easy graphics utility that will prove useful to people who need to create electronic displays. With simple manipulation, the user can design stand-alone displays that can be used as ice- breakers at parties or congratulatory messages and screen graphics that can be used as titles for programs done in GFA BASIC. As a professional musician playing in a wedding orchestra, I have found that using the Atari as a display can be quite an eye-catching event. During the wedding reception our monitor flashes displays announcing who we are and congratulating the newlyweds. Parents enjoy the added feature to the festivities, photographers take pictures that are included in the wedding album and the house usually is quite impressed with a group that uses a unique idea like this. With a little programming skill, the files produced with Shadow Letters can also be included in GFA BASIC programs to create flashy displays. In addition to using these displays for public amusement, you might try using them as titles for programs or headers for special reports in school or for business conferences. In fact, the title screen of Shadow Letters was created by the program. I later added my credits to the screen. More about how this can be done later. Now, let's get to the program. It would be best to copy SHADOW.PRG to a blank formatted disk, since you will probably want to save some of the files you create. Some of the saves you will do eat up a lot of disk space in no time at all. Boot up the program in LOW Resolution and you will see the title screen. After a few seconds you will be taken to the OPTION SCREEN, filled with all kinds of intriguing buttons. This is where you will set all of the parameters for your title screen. Let's take a look at each of the buttons to see how they work. At the top left of the screen box there are three boxes numbered 1,2,3 and headed by the word ROWS. Your display can consist of anywhere from one to three rows of text. Each row having a maximum of 17 characters. The default of the program has selected one row. This is high- lighted in red. Inactivity is indicated by green. Somewhere on the screen there is a hand pointer for the mouse. Point to the box marked 2 and click the left mouse button. What happens? The 1 box changes to green and 2 is high-lighted in red. You have now told the program you want to have two lines of text in your display. Let's select 3 for our test display. (What the heck! Let's go all the way.) So far there has been no visible effect, except the changing of the box high-lights. If you look to the lower right of the OPTION SCREEN, you will see a small white window with the huge black letters "TEST" in the center. This window will allow you to get an idea of what your text will look like in the final display. At the start there are actually two sets of letters printed here. The second set, at the moment, is printed exactly over the first set. I refer to the first set of letters as the back and the second set as the front. The front set is movable and will be paramount in creating a three dimensional (shadowed) effect. The default fixes both sets of letters as black in color. This is not very useful, so let's change the color of the front set of letters. Directly below the ROW boxes we examined earlier, there is another set of boxes labeled COLOR. Initially this means the color of the front set of letters. By clicking on the up or down arrows paralleling this box, you can change the color of the front set of letters. As you do this, notice how the test window changes to reflect the color you have selected. Click the up or down arrows until you have red for the front color. This will probably be a 2, if you have not tampered with the system colors. Now isn't this fun. But all we have here is the word "TEST" in red. We don't see any shadows. Ok, lets create some. On the upper right of the OPTION SCREEN there are two sets of boxes. Both are called PLACE buttons (short for placement). One is flanked by two boxes labeled UP and DN (short for UP and DOWN), and the other is centered between two boxes labeled LF and RT (You guessed it; they stand for LEFT and RIGHT). As I am sure you have already surmised, clicking on the appropriate boxes will move the front set of letters up, down, left or right in relation to the back set of letters. I have restricted the movement to my personal taste and generally what seems to look best before becoming a mess on the screen. So you will only be able to move up four positions, down four positions, left four positions and right two positions. Hopefully this will be enough to satisfy most needs. (Programmers -- that curious breed -- can fool around with the source code to try other variations.) Let's click on DN twice to move the front sleeve of letters down two positions. Then click on RT twice to move the letters to the right, again two positions. Notice how the test window updates on each click, letting you see exactly how your text will look. If you want, go ahead and fool around with these buttons to see how you can create different effects and different depths for your shadowed letters. At the lower left of the option box you will notice an assortment of interesting little buttons and bars. Let's play around here to see what we can achieve. There are nine keys labeled A - I. These are style keys and by pressing them you can select a different style for your text. I used the ones that seemed to best work with the shadow effect, so all of the Atari fonts are not used here. The outlined text especially did not work because the "see-through" effect tended to blur the final result on the screen in all cases. Peck away at these keys to witness the variety of effects available. You can, of course, go back and change the colors and front text placement for further effects. Even more effects can be achieved by pressing on the bar labeled SLICE. Notice that the lettering on this and other bars is done in white. All of these keys, except RESTORE, are toggle bars, which means that every time you press on them an effect turns off and on. Slicing cuts the letters of your text horizontally, almost like those automatic bread slicers in the bakery. This not only changes the shape of the letters but, in some case, causes the shading and coloration to change as well. SLICE is a three way toggle. Press on the bar once and you will slice the letters all the way through. Press again and you will get a half slice effect -- very eye catching. Press again and the letters are whole. All of the effects so far have been set against a white background. The effect of some color combinations and shadowing is better seen against a darker color, however. Press on the bar marked BACKDROP for another enhancement to your display. A gray box will become the surface for your letters. You will find that some colors will stand out much better; and, in some cases, the softer effect will improve the final screen. The fun is not over yet. With the options set the way they are, you can have 16 colors on your front letters, all with a black shading. Actually you can have 256 different combinations of color between the back and front letters. Click on the bar labeled REVERSE, and the back letter color will jump to the front while the front color will jump to the back. Zipping up and down the scale switching colors at random times can produce some really unusual effects. Try this while switching styles, backgrounds and slicing and you are in for one mind boggling textual display. Let's say you get tired of all this playing and you want to start over again, just as if the defaults were in effect. Just press on the RESTORE bar, and you can start fresh. I have tried a lot of different combinations, playing with all of the above buttons, but I doubt that I experienced all of the effects possible. Indeed, I am not sure I would ever use some of the anomalies I created. But many of them could prove most effective for special occasions. For example, you might try a light font effect with slicing and moving the front panel of letters down until a patchwork effect is achieved. Slicing a light font tends to give a double slicing effect, in most cases. By mixing the effects of these buttons you can create ghostly or blurred images. Experiment is the key word here. There are two other buttons located on the lower right of the OPTION SCREEN. The QUIT bar is self explanatory. When you are all done playing with Shadow Letters, press on this bar to exit the program. After you have set all of the options the way you like, click on the Atari button in the lower right corner. You will be whisked to the INPUT SCREEN where you will be able to enter the actual text you want on your final display. Type the line (no more than 17 characters) exactly as they should appear in the final display. Press RETURN. If you selected more than one line at the OPTION SCREEN, you will be given subsequent input lines. Enter each line of text, and then press RETURN at the end. The screen will clear. If you requested a backdrop, it will be painted first, and then your text will be printed in the fashion you requested. Take a good look at your screen. What a masterpiece! You should see three buttons at the bottom of the screen. These are three more options. First of all, you might not think this work is a "masterpiece." Click on Ignore, and you will be sent back to the OPTION SCREEN to make any modifications. You can jump back and forth between this screen and the display until your display is just right. If all is satisfactory, you have two ways to save it out to disk. Click on the Screen box, and a file selector box will appear asking for the name of the file under which your screen will be saved. Be sure to use an .SCR extender on the file name. After the screen has been saved, the three option buttons will once again appear. The screen has been saved with the BSAVE command of GFA BASIC. You can load this screen into any GFA BASIC program using the BLOAD command. I have included a short program on the magazine disk. It is called SCRENVUE.PRG. You can use this to view all of the screens you save to disk. A study of the short source code will reveal how you can use the BLOAD in your own GFA programs. You now have the option of Ignoring, that is, going back to the OPTION SCREEN to rework the display or create a new one. Or instead, you could press on the third box, Save. Clicking here will actually write a GFA BASIC subroutine and save it in listed form (.LST) to disk. A file box will appear, indicating that a .LST file will be saved. Give your subroutine a name, with the appropriate extender, and then press on OK. Using the MERGE option in GFA will allow you to load in this subroutine as part of a program, or stand-alone screen. You may, of course, add other text to the screen, borders, and color changes. This routine may also be set up as a Procedure which may be called up in any GFA program. The only caveat is that none of the variables in the routine should be used in your main program. Otherwise havoc may occur. Ok, now that you know how to use the program, get to work. Create some interesting and flashy headings for all your computer creations.