On 17 Sep 96, Andrew Seeger wrote to Frank Adam --



Hi, I think I mailed you before about the ANSI graphics within your program.

This time, it's about that clock thingy :)



FA> Do the screens have to be ANSI ?

 AS> Well yes and no, i did some screens for the program with The Draw, but

 AS> what i want to avoid is having the screens on hard disk, as i want



Just save in C format (refer to previous message) and you will have them

hard-coded within the program!



FA> If not, then get your hands on VidMgr12.zip and with a bit of

 AS> Done, will have a looksy to see what i can come up with, Vidmgr looks

 AS> like something i was after.



You don't REALLY need it...



AS>> 2... A clock routine, to display the clock and continually



Find a spot in your program where it is waiting for user-input or the like

and while it is idling, make a call to the clock routine (or WHATEVER you

want done!) ...  This is a snippet of my code in a user-input routine :



=== bit of code ===

// special variables

// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

typedef void (* Idle_Ptr)(); // a pointer to a function



// prototypes

// ~~~~~~~~~~

void Idle(); // simple idle routine for Get_Input -- does nothing

int Get_Input(char *, int, Idle_Ptr = Idle, int = 0, char * = "\x00");

        /* hi-tech input function :)

                parameters are : 1 - string-input variable

                                 2 - maximum length

                                 3 - pointer to idle function

                                 4 - echo characters on/off

                                 5 - characters to exclude

                returns : 1 - if input aborted

                          0 - if input finished normally

        */



void Idle() {

        asm nop; // like I said -- absolutely nothing

}



int Get_Input(char *String, int Max_Length, Idle_Ptr Idle_Func, int Mode,

                char *Exclude_Char) {

     char Input_Char;

     while (!kbhit()) (* Idle_Func)(); // call idle function while idle

     while (((Input_Char = getch()) != 0x0D) && (Input_Char !=
0x03) &&

        (Input_Char != 0x1B)) {

        // loops while character is not \n, ^C or ESC

        switch (Input_Char) {

                // irrelevant input-based stuff deleted

        }

        while (!kbhit()) (* Idle_Func)(); // call idle function while idle

     }

     // then return...

}

=== end of code ===



I hope I've not trimmed any of the essentials out, but I think it's all in

there...  I've used a function pointer, so I can put Get_Input() in a LIB and

just call it from any of my programs...



FA> You just call the function from where ever there is a bit of not much

FA> to do, and it should be fairly smooth. Of course if the program gets

FA> tied down somewhere for a few seconds the update will not happen, but



Just call Get_Input() with like this :



        Get_Input(Input, 81, My_Idler);



where Input is the variable, 81 is the max. length and My_Idler is your

function (N.B. "My_Idler", not "My_Idler()" !!!).



FA> in most cases it's more than adequate. Only better solution i thought

FA> of at the time, was to hook int08 or 1C but i never got around to play

FA> with it.      I wonder if the CMOS could be used directly too...anyone

FA> ???



Yuppers -- like me 



Chow.



Junyer Hakker.



--- PPoint 2.00