TheDraw is a

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

to create

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

and animations as well as

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) character (computing), characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCI ...

. The editor is especially useful to create or modify files in

format and text documents, which use the graphical characters of the IBM ASCII

code pages In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable character (computing), characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a s ...

, because they are not supported by

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

anymore. The first version of the editor was developed in 1986 by Ian E. Davis of TheSoft Programming Services. The last public version of the editor was version 4.63, which was released in October 1993. TheDraw was one of the first ANSI editors that supported ANSIs longer than 25 rows. The limit in the latest available version is still 100 rows. Other editors, such as

ACiDDraw ACiD Productions (ACiD) is a digital art group. Founded in 1990, the group originally specialized in ANSI artwork for bulletin board systems (BBS). More recently, they have extended their reach into other graphical media and computer software dev ...

are able to support ANSIs larger than 100 lines for a single ANSI/ASCII (ACiDDraw supports 1,000 lines). The animation mode is limited to 50 lines (rows). The column width can be extended from the standard 80 characters to 160, but this also reduces the row limit down to 50.

Compatibility with Microsoft Windows

The program is stable in an MS-DOS Window on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

and allows the user to maintain mouse control. Used with

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

however, TheDraw performs with less predictable results. It works with

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

Significant features

Some of the features of the editor include: * Mouse support to select blocks of text within the editor (even under Windows in window and full-screen mode) * For the selected area/block exist a number of unique functions :* Fill function to change the color of a whole section of the text :* Copy/Move and Paste function to copy/move entire blocks of text within the document. :* Erase function that clears the selected area of any characters without the surrounding characters changing position. :* Replace function to replace the content of the selected area with the content of the TheDraw "clipboard". :* Load/Save function to save only the selected area or load an ANSI/ASCII from the hard disk into the selected area (replace). * Font manager to create/modify and organize

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

and

fonts to be used within the editor * Additional file formats in addition to ANSI (.ANS) and text (.ASC). :* The proprietary

PCBoard PCBoard (PCB) was a bulletin board system (BBS) application first introduced for DOS in 1983 by Fred Clark's Clark Development Company. PCBoard was one of the first commercial BBS packages for DOS systems, and was considered one of the "high end ...

(.PCB) and

Wildcat! BBS Wildcat! BBS is a bulletin board system server application that Mustang Software developed in 1986 for MS-DOS, and later ported to Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphica ...

(.BBS) file formats. :* The AVATAR (.AVT) file standard defined by

FidoNet __ / \ /, oo \ (_, /_) _`@/_ \ _ , , \ \\ , (*) , \ )) ______ , __U__, / \// / FI ...

. :* Save files for various

programming languages A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide features ...

, including Assembly (.ASM), C (.H) and

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Pascal (programming language), Pascal running on the operating systems CP/M, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. ...

(.PAS). :* Ability to save ANSIs as .COM binary, .BIN and

object code In computing, object code or object module is the product of an assembler or compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' ...

(.OBJ). :* Other supported formats:

BSave BSAVE and BLOAD are commands in many varieties of the BASIC programming language. BSAVE copies RAM to a binary file, and BLOAD copies the contents of the file to RAM. The term "BSAVE image" could mean any of various raw image formats of video di ...

(.BSV) and backup files (.BAK) * Comprehensive help screens * Preset transition animations to wipe or change the image * ANSI animation support (creation and modification) * The "Draw Mode" used automatically the appropriate character from the currently selected set to draw lines and corners by simply using the cursor keys (up/down/left/right) * The default character sets can be modified and extended

References

External links

TheDraw V4.63
download page
Interview
with Ian Davis, creator of TheDraw, by RaD Man of

ACiD Productions ACiD Productions (ACiD) is a digital art group. Founded in 1990, the group originally specialized in ANSI artwork for bulletin board systems (BBS). More recently, they have extended their reach into other graphical media and computer software de ...

ASCII art Bulletin board systems DOS text editors 1986 software

Compatibility with Microsoft Windows

Significant features

See also

References

Further reading

External links