Hello, PB fellow programmers and friends...
I decided to share one of my routines with you nifty people, so I formatted
it for this echo area and included help and tips, etc.  It's a complete
program which demonstrates a fully graphical percentbar for use in any
of your programs which do lots of loops and activities requiring a
percentage of completion, etc.  It works forwards or backwards, can
be told to use numerical values in the display or not, and can also
be used to display instant percentbars without needing to loop at all!
This routine works decently, and can be called within your loops to
show progress bars during copies, disk reads, alphabetizing, etc.,
in a totally GRAPHICAL manner at any nearly any position on the screen
with the width and numerical display programmer defined!
It's really neat, and I spent only marginal time creating it.  It
also restores the previous color/cursor position from where the routine
was called, so NO need to worry with that stuff.  It's something I
am most proud of, and also - it's fast.  Thanks to Brian who earlier
posted tips on screen color restore, showing we all share but give
credit where credit is due.
You can supply the width,x,y positions and other criteria like a normal
function, and tie it into loops to display real time percentbars.
The output will resemble this (for example):
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´500/1000ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿
³50%  ²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿
³50%  ²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²²þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ³
ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
The first one shows the graphics bar (the progress graphics really
are spaces, but for purposes of this echo msg, are graphical boxes instead)
WITH numerical values displayed, the second without.  Note that the
numerical displays automatically format the box, so the output is clean
and does not include unnecessary spaces and so forth.  Cool, huh?
Now I wanna share this gem with ya.  You can play with it, to suit
your needs, or if a loop uses odd values, etc., in the output.
Here goes the import of BAR.BAS into this echo, 100% Power Basic coded:
---------------------------import of BAR.BAS begin---------------------------
' PERCENTAGE BAR ROUTINE - WORKS FORWARD OR BACKWARDS OR STATIC VALUE!
' by JAMES GOLDBLOOM with color restore method courtesy of Brian McLaughlin
' Public domain code - distribute freely and enjoy (3/8/96 PB 3.x)
' Syntax shown below:
'
' call percentbar (valuebar,lowbar,highbar,ybar,xbar,widthbar,showvalues)
'
' Where:  valuebar    =    current value of operation within the range
'         lowbar      =    lowest possible (or beginning) value of range
'         highbar     =    highest possible (or ending) value of range
'         ybar        =    cursor line to place percentbar (y axis)
'         xbar        =    corsor row to place percentbar (x axis)
'         widthbar    =    width of percentbar dots (in columns) (max 72)
'                          and suggest values: 12,18,40,50,72 (they work.)
'         showvalues  =    0|1 (1 to display current/high valuees, 0=off)
'
' All values should be positive, but decimals are allowed.  Widthbar
' seems to look the nicest at 72 (which is the limit.) Remember to freeze
' the cursor by suffixing print/screen output statements with semi-colons
' to preserve the colors and x,y positions properly within your loops.
'
' Use this routine for progress display during file/dir. reads or ANY loop
' operations by merely calling it using data from YOUR loops fed into it!
' Shows actual percentage (0-100%) to left of bar, automatically!
' Last color attribute/screen x,y position automatically preserved on exit!
' Work with high to low ranges, or low to high ranges (try it backwards!)
' Loops not required, you can optionally show a bar with "50%" instantly!
'
' See the example below, mess with the ranges...
cls
color 11,0
print "PERCENT BAR Stupid but Powerful Demonstration...."
print
print "This is an instant loop, 50%:";
call percentbar (50,1,100,csrlin,pos+2,36,0)
locate 7,1
print "Another instant loop (values shown), 75%:";
call percentbar (75,1,100,csrlin,pos+2,20,1)
locate 11,1
print "THIS PROGRAM CAN ALSO BE USED WITHIN LOOPS, FOR/NEXT'S, ETC.!"
print:print "A good range to test would be 1 to 10000"
print "And you can work backwards, too, such as 10000 to 1!":print
input "Type in starting number";begin:if begin=0 then end
input "Type in ending number";finish:if finish=0 then end
direction=1:if begin>finish then direction=-1
for count=begin to finish step direction
locate 19,1:color 10:print"Current loop value:"count"...";
call percentbar (count,begin,finish,23,1,72,1)
next count
print" Finished!"
print "Nifty, huh?  Examine the code, see how it was done!"
end
'BELOW IS THE SUB ROUTINE...
'-----------------------------------------------------------------------
'PERCENTBAR Sub-Routine written by James Goldbloom 1:109/611@Fidonet.org
'-----------------------------------------------------------------------
'
'Example:  percentbar (50,1,100,24,1,72)  <-- Display a 50% bar at bottom!
'                                             of screen!
'
SUB PERCENTBAR (valuebar,lowbar,highbar,ybar,xbar,widthbar,showvalues)
oldy=csrlin:oldx=pos(0):if oldx=1 then oldx=2 else if oldx=80 then oldx=81
if widthbar>72 then widthbar=72
fore%=screen(oldy,oldx-1,1)
back%=fore%:fore%=fore% and 15:shift right back%,4
if lowbar>highbar then swap highbar,lowbar
percentage=int((valuebar/highbar)*100)
locate ybar,xbar:color 9,0
if showvalues=0 then print chr$(218)repeat$(widthbar+5,chr$(196))chr$(191);
if showvalues=1 then
  tempbar$=mid$(str$(valuebar),2)+"/"+mid$(str$(highbar),2)
  print chr$(218)repeat$(int(widthbar/2)-1,chr$(196))chr$(180);:color 15
  print tempbar$;:color 9:print chr$(195);
  print repeat$(widthbar-((widthbar/2)+len(tempbar$))+4,chr$(196))chr$(191);
end if
locate ybar+1,xbar:color 9:
print chr$(179);:color 14
print mid$(str$(percentage),2)"%"space$(5-len(str$(percentage)));
drawbar=int((widthbar*percentage)/100)
locate ybar+1,xbar+6:color 1,1:print repeat$(drawbar,chr$(32));
if (widthbar-drawbar)1 then
 color 11,0:print repeat$(widthbar-drawbar,chr$(254));
 color 9:print chr$(179);
end if
color 9,0:locate ybar+2,xbar
print chr$(192)repeat$(widthbar+5,chr$(196))chr$(217);
EXITBAR:
locate oldy,oldx:color fore%,back%
tempbar$="":tempbar=0:tempbarlength=0
drawbar=0:percentage=0:ybar=0:xbar=0
END SUB
------------------------------end of import----------------------------------
Enjoy!  You can play with the values, easily adapt colors and varying
graphics changes.  Nothing fancy, good old fashioned ascii codes!
BE SURE TO RUN THE DEMO.  You'll love it!  If you use this routine, I
would appreciate a mention in your docs, and please just lemme know
if you did.  I don't want money, just ego stroking! Hehe....
(Don't we all?)  I do this for a hobby, so I like to have fun with it...
;-) 
Anyone who can convert this to machine code, I'd appreciate it!
-James (SysOp/AD Message System)
--- QuickBBS 2.80 GoldBase (Zeta-1)
---------------