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ACiD Productionstm Acquisition Enhanced File Viewer
Coded by Skull Leader and Tasmaniac
Screens by Lord Jazz
Documentation and Update History of ACiD Productions ACiD View
By SiDS and RaD Man of ACiD Productionstm
Current version of ACiD View : 4.12 / 01-01-199604:12
Note: This is a full release of ACiD View IV, but there is always the
possibility that you may encounter a bug or two. If you have
any questions, comments, suggestions or bug reports regarding this
release, please direct them to us at acid-public@acid.org via
the internet, or on the Utilities Discussion base on AgoraNet.
Introduction to ACiD View
ACiD View welcomes you to the most comprehensive Art View-
er in production. This innovative program is capable of dis-
playing ANSI, BIN, RIP and GIF graphics. In addition,
the viewer has been designed with a special interest for those
who multi-task. ACiD View utilizes its own internal ANSI
routines, making it capable of viewing ANSI without a separate
device driver. We hope that ACiD View provides you with as
much pleasure as we intended with its creation.
Features
Now supporting our very own special SAUCE
Command Line Viewing
Variable Speed ANSI Viewing
XMS Support
Slide Show Viewing File Tagging
Modem-Simulation for ANSI Viewing Doesnt affect multitaskers
Different file listing methods, including detailed information
File Masking Six possible masks
Drive and Directory switching
Level 0-1 RIP Viewing, with multiple fonts built in
Smoothscroll, Textscroll, and Autoscroll ANSI and BIN Viewing
25-, 28-, 30-, 35-, 43-, and 50-line mode ANSI and BIN Viewing
Fully-Features ANSI Scroll Back in several different video modes
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 80x25 or 80x50 text modes
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 320x200x256 MXGA mode
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 320x400x256 XGA mode
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 640x480x16 VGA mode
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 640x400, 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768x256
SVGA modes
GIF Viewing
Support for most SVGA chipsets and VESA
File deleting capability
Full mouse support
Screen capturing, in .GIF format.
Number of ANSI lines and files in a directory limited only by
how much memory is avaible.
Requires
EGA graphics preferably SVGA
286 or better processor
about 500K of conventional memory more memory bigger ANSIs
What ACiD View Displays
ACiD View will display ANSI screens in several different video
modes. These modes include the default, text mode, 640x480x16
VGA, 320x200x256 MCGA, 320x400x256 XGA, 640x400, 640x480,
800x600, and 1024x768x256 VESA SVGA modes. ACiD View also
supports most SVGA chipsets.
ACiD View displays most low level 0-1 RIP screens. Although
it will show all of the RIPs presented in the Acquisition, it
may not display some of the other RIPS you own. This is due
to the fact that some of the higher level RIP commands have
not been implemented. Several fonts including 8x8, Triplex,
Small Font, Sans Serif, Gothic, Simplex, Complex, European,
and Bold Outline have been added.
ACiD View can show GIF graphics files. The video mode for these
formats is selected automaticly. If a mode that is capable of
showing the entire picture is not found, the picture is not shown.
ACiD View Functions
Funtion Keys
Esc KeyPad
F1 Help
Exit Num Next Prev -
Lock Font Font Res F2 Switch Video Mode
Tab Home Up Page F3 Switch Font Size
Up
SAUCE Mode + F4 Switch Line Mode
Left Tag Right Res
File F5 Toggle Smoothscroll
Enter
End Down Page F6 Toggle Autoscroll
View File Down
Enter F7 Toggle BPS
Insert Del
F8 Toggle Color/Grey/BW
Space
F9 Toggle Ext/Blinking
Tag/Untag Files
F1 Quick-Help : Brief description of the keys.
F2 Video Mode : Selects the video mode that the selected ANSI
or BIN is to be viewed in. Note: GIF and PCX
will auto detect the appropriate mode, if a mode
large enough to fit the entire picture is not
found, the file is not displayed.
Text - 80x25 or 80x50 VGA text mode, depending on
the aspect ratio.
XGA - Displays in 320x200x256 tweaked Mode X mode.
MXGA - Displays in 320x400x256 tweaked Mode X mode.
VGA - Displays in 640x400x16 VGA mode.
SVGA1 - Displays in 640x400x256 SVGA mode
SVGA2 - Displays in 640x480x256 SVGA mode
SVGA3 - Displays in 800x600x256 SVGA mode
SVGA4 - Displays in 1024x768x256 SVGA mode
F3 Font Size : This determines the font size to be used while
displaying an ANSI in a VGA mode.
F4 Line Modes : Toggles which line mode will be used while
displaying ANSI in Text Video Mode.
F5 Smoothscroll : Toggles if the ANSI will be displayed line-by-line
or pixel-by-pixel in Text Video Mode.
F6 Autoscroll : Toggles if the ANSI will scroll down automatically
or if you must control the viewing manually.
F7 BPS Simulation : Changes the BPS simulation speed for ANSIs in
View mode.
F8 Color Mode : This is usually set to Color, however it can be
set to Grey to do greyscale or ASCII to strip
the color from ANSIs and BINs.
F9 Toggle Blink : Determines if 16 background colors instead of
blinking will be used for ANSI and BIN display.
F10 Capture Screen : When this is pressed when a ansi or rip is being
viewed, a image of the screen will be saved in
.GIF format, in the current directory. The file
name for this capture file is AVCAPXX.GIF where
XX is a number which increases with the number of
captured files. Note- This does not work during
viewing of an ansi in text mode, nor does it work
properly for VGA mode 320x400.
ACiD View Alternative Functions
ALT-D : When a file is selected, and this key combination
is pressed, a confirmation message will apear.
Hitting Y at this message will allow you do
delete the file.
TAB : Toggles between three different file display options
including regular with sauce, multiple columns,
and full file information.
ACiD View Command Line Viewing
ACiD View now allows the ability for command line viewing. There are
several option available. These option can be obtained by running
ACiD View with the -h, switch when calling ACiDVIEW
ACiDVIEW /R: /F: /C:C,G,A /SMOOTH /AUTO /B: @Filenames/Mask
ResolutionR FontF /C /SMOOTH
C Color Smooth Scroll
1 Text TEXT VGA G Grey /AUTO
2 320x200 A Ascii Auto Scroll
3 320x400 1 25L 1x2
4 640x400v 2 28L 2x2 @Filename - Text file containg list of files.
5 640x400 3 30L 1x4 One filename per line.
6 640x680 4 35L 2x4
7 800x600 5 43L 4x4 Filenames - Single file, or multiple.
8 1024x768 6 50L 4x8
Mask - Mask for files to view.
@Filename - This is the name of a regular text file containing a list of
files which are to be viewed, in respective order. This list
can contain the name of any file, ACiD View will automatically
determine which format the file is in. Wildcards are not
not supported in this text file. Invalid files will not be
displayed, just skipped over.
What is SAUCE?
Recipe for SAUCE
Chef cuisinier : Tasmaniac / ACiD
Maitre dhtel : Rad Man / ACiD
ANSis used to be just ANSis, pictures were just pictures,
loaders were just loaders and quite frankly, every file was just
as plain tasting as every other. This is about to change, how-
ever, because ACiD has decided to give their files an extra
je-ne-sais-quoi. In reality, well be adding SAUCE to every
file you can imagine.
Now, before we thoroughly confuse you, let us explain what we
are doing here. SAUCE stands for Standard Architecture for
Universal Comment Extensions. Although originally intended for
personal use in ANSis and RIP screens, early in the developement
of EFI Extended File Information it was decided that EFI should
be extended to have support for more than just ANSi and RIP
screens. Our brainchild was born and the specs were designed.
The only aspect left undecided was the name, and after rejecting
some very funny candidates, SAUCE was unanimously chosen. This
leads us to the big question in the sky, What is sauce? SAUCE
is a universal process to incorporate a full description for any
type of file. The most outstanding aspect of this concept is that
you have access to the complete file name, the files title, the
creation date, the creator of the file, the group that the creator
is employed by, and much, much, more.
A full explanation on how you can implement SAUCE is
described at the end of this document in the PLATES Programming
Language Architecture To Extract SAUCE section. Although you can
create your own programs to implement SAUCE to your files, we
recommend that you use the SPOON.EXE program to ensure a greater
universal compatibility.
SAUCE already supports a plethora of filetypes See PLATES.
If you have a need for the SAUCE specifications, please contact us
before you make the changes yourself. We will accomodate your
needs as soon as possible. After all, SAUCE is designed to become
a standard, and if people change the specs without allowing us to
make a complete update, there will be no standard. In the event
that we change SAUCE, we will quickly release a public update
which will most definately include an improved and updated
SPOON.EXE.
SAUCE has advantages over any other system in use. Each
description will be added to the file and will provide a file
description no matter what computer it is used for. SAUCE, how-
ever, also provides a back compatibility that uses a file with
descriptions for those files that do NOT already have a SAUCE
description. Processing in this manner is fully implemented in
SPOON.EXE and one can extract embedded SAUCE to this data file and
add SAUCE to files from this data file.
PLATES
Let us begin with a description of the record layouts used.
The record layouts and code examples are in a variated pascal
pseudo code, and should be transferrable enough to implement in
most other programming languages. For ease of reading, the
examples assume that the file is correct and that no error-
checking need be included. How rigorous you check for errors is
completely up to you, and will most likely depend on the file type
you are describing.
SAUCE RECORD
This portion of the documentation is about the SAUCE record.
The SAUCE record describes the file in short, and provides other
information not included in the SAUCE record itself.
A sauce record is EXACTLY 128 bytes in size.
Fieldname : Name of the field.
Size : Size of the field in BYTES
Type : Type of data. This can be :
BYTE : One byte unsigned numeric value 0 to 255
WORD : Two byte unsigned numeric value 0 to 65535
INTEGER : Two byte signed numeric value -32768 to 32767
LONG : Four byte signed numeric value -2147483648 to 2147483647
CHARACTER : One byte ASCII value. Longer character fields are
padded with spaces. It is NOT a PASCAL string with a
leading length byte, and its NOT a C-Style string
with a trailing nul-byte. A 10 byte character field
holding the text ANSI would look like this.
ANSI .
Numeric fields should be zero when not used, character fields
should be all spaces when not used.
V : SAUCE Version number. This indicates the version of
SAUCE when the field was implemented.
Description : Complete description of the field.
No fields are REQUIRED to be filled in except for ID, Version, FileSize,
DataType and FileType.
FieldName Size Type V Description
ID 5 Character 00 SAUCE Identification. This should be equal to
SAUCE or the record is not a valid SAUCE
record.
Version 2 Character 00 Version number of SAUCE. Current version is
00. As new features are added to the
specifications of SAUCE, this version number
will change. Future versions SHOULD remain
compatible with version 00 only ADDING on
the specifications, it is however not unlikely
that this compatibility is impossible to
maintain, but this is of no concern now.
Title 35 Character 00 Title of the file.
Author 20 Character 00 Name or handle of the creator of the file.
Group 20 Character 00 Name of the group the creator is employed by.
Date 8 Character 00 Date the file was created. This date is in
the format CCYYMMDD Century, year, month,
day. There is a good reason why the date
is in this format, but its not used in
version 00 of SAUCE. It will be used in
a future version of SAUCE.
FileSize 4 Long 00 Original filesize NOT including any
information of SAUCE.
DataType 1 Byte 00 Type of Data. See DATATYPES further on
FileType 1 Byte 00 Type of File. See DATATYPES further on
TInfo1 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 1 See DATATYPES
When used, this field holds informative
values. Any program using SAUCE should not
rely on these values being correct or filled
in.
TInfo2 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 2 See DATATYPES
TInfo3 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 3 See DATATYPES
TInfo4 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 4 See DATATYPES
Comments 1 Byte 00 Number of Comment lines See COMMENTS
Flags 1 Byte * 00 Flags indication optional settings/switches
These flags have different meaning depending
on the data type.
The flags werent originally in the concept
for Version 00 of SAUCE. but since the
specification of SAUCE expects all filler
bytes to be binary zero, the flags should be
set to ZERO in all previous files, and cause
no significant harm.
An Example PASCAL record looks like this:
TYPE SAUCERec RECORD
ID : Array1..5 of Char
Version : Array1..2 of Char
Title : Array1..35 of Char
Author : Array1..20 of Char
Group : Array1..20 of Char
Date : Array1..8 of Char
FileSize : Longint
DataType : Byte
FileType : Byte
TInfo1 : Word
TInfo2 : Word
TInfo3 : Word
TInfo4 : Word
Comments : Byte
Flags : Byte
Filler : Array1..22 of Char
END
An Example C record looks like this:
typedef SAUCEREC
char ID5
char Version2
char Title35
char Author20
char Group20
char Date8
signed long FileSize
unsigned char DataType
unsigned char FileType
unsigned int TInfo1
unsigned int TInfo2
unsigned int TInfo3
unsigned int TInfo4
unsigned char Flags
char Filler22
SAUCEREC
DATATYPES
DataType and FileType hold the information needed to deter-
mine what type of file it is.
There are 5 DataTypes, these are with their respective numeric values :
0 None : Undefined filetype, you could use this to add SAUCE
information to personal datafiles needed by programs,
but not having any other meaning.
1 Character : Any character based file. Examples are ASCII, ANSi and
RIP.
2 Graphics : Any bitmap graphic file. Examples are GIF, LBM, and
PCX.
3 Vector : Any vector based graphic file. Examples are DXF and
CAD files.
4 Sound : Any sound related file. Examples are samples, MOD
files and MIDI.
5 BinaryText: This is RAW memory copy of a text screen. Its
basically the BIN format you can save from whitin
TheDraw. Each character is built up of two consecutive
bytes. The first is the character to be displayed. The
second is the Attribute byte.
None
When using the None datatype, you should have FileType set to
zero also. This is a compatibility issue as its not unlikely,
the None datatype will have filetypes in the future.
Character
When using the Character datatype, you have following filetypes
available :
0 ASCII : Plain text file with no formatting codes or color codes.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of lines in the file.
1 ANSi : ANSi file. With ANSi color codes and cursor
positioning.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines
in the file.
2 ANSiMation: ANSi Animation. With ANSi color codes and cursor
positioning. While an ANSi file can also have animated
sequences, there is a clear distinction. While an ANSi
may or may not have a beginning animated sequence
introducing the group or artist the rest is just a
sequence of colored characters. An ANSiMation on the
other hand is a more like a text mode cartoon.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines
the ANSiMation was created for.
A program using SAUCE may use these two values to
switch to the appropriate video mode.
3 RIP : Remote Imaging Protocol RIP graphics file.
TInfo1 holds the width should be 640
TInfo2 holds the height should be 350
TInfo3 holds the number of colors should be 16
4 PCBoard : File with PCBoard style @X color codes and @ macros
and ANSi codes.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines
in the file.
5 AVATAR : A file with AVATAR and ANSi color codes and cursor
positioning.
FLAGS for the Character Datatype.
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A
All non-used bits should be ZERO.
A Non-Blink mode iCE Color.
When this bit is SET equal to 1 The ANSi is created using iCE
color codes. This is a special mode where the blinking is
disabled, and you have 16 background colors available. Basically,
you have the same choice for background colors as for foreground
colors.
Please note:
When the picture does not make specific use of the iCE color, you
should NOT have this bit set. When you do not support the iCE
color mode, you should probably not display the file as it could
look pretty weird in normal mode.
Graphics
For all graphics types, TInfo1 holds width of the image, TInfo2
holds the Height of the image and TInfo3 holds the number of bits
per pixel a 256 colour image would have 8 bits per pixel, a
TrueColor image would have 24
Following Graphics filetypes are available :
0 GIF CompuServ Graphics Interchange format
1 PCX ZSoft Paintbrush PCX format
2 LBM/IFF DeluxePaint LBM/IFF format
3 TGA Targa Truecolor
4 FLI Autodesk FLI animation file
5 FLC Autodesk FLC animation file
6 BMP Windows Bitmap
7 GL Grasp GL Animation
8 DL DL Animation
9 WPG Wordperfect Bitmap
10 SBM SUN BitMap
11 JPG JPeg compressed File
12 MPG MPeg compressed animation/video
13 AVI Audio Visual Interlace
FLAGS
Not used, should be all zeroes.
Vector
Following Vector filetypes are available :
0 DXF CAD Data eXchange File
1 DWG AutoCAD Drawing file
2 WPG WordPerfect/DrawPerfect vector graphics
3 SVI Sun VectorImage
FLAGS
Not used, should be all zeroes.
Sound
Following sound filetypes are available :
0 MOD 4, 6 or 8 channel MOD/NST file
1 669 Renaissance 8 channel 669 format
2 STM Future Crew 4 channel ScreamTracker format
3 S3M Future Crew variable channel ScreamTracker3 format
4 MTM Renaissance variable channel MultiTracker Module
5 FAR Farandole composer module
6 ULT UltraTracker module
7 AMF DMP/DSMI Advanced Module Format
8 DMF Delusion Digital Music Format XTracker
9 OKT Oktalyser module
10 ROL AdLib ROL file FM
11 CMF Creative Labs FM
12 MIDI MIDI file
13 SADT SAdT composer FM Module
14 VOC Creative Labs Sample
15 WAV Windows Wave file
16 SMP8 8 Bit Sample, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
17 SMP8S 8 Bit sample stereo, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
18 SMP16 16 Bit sample, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
19 SMP16S 16 Bit sample stereo, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
20 PATCH8 8 Bit patch-file
21 PATCH1616 Bit Patch-file
FLAGS
Not used, should be all zeroes.
BinaryText
The Binary Text format, basically has no Filetype, since the datatype
has already defined how the file will look.
The FileType however specifies the WIDTH of the BinaryText screen.
Only the Width is required, as the Height can be calculated by dividing
the filesize by the Width.
In an attempt to provide as much WIDTH as possible in a possible 256
values of the Byte-sized FileType. The width is specified in Multiples
of 2. The fact that the Width is specified in multiples of 2 isnt
really a problem, since you also need to define the effective screen
size in multiples of 2.
An example : For normal 80*25 binary images as made with TheDraw the
FileType value would be 40 since 2*40 equals 80 g
All you need to do is divide the width of the binary text
image by 2. This gives a maximum width of 510 characters.
Although currently not supported, should there be a need
for even bigger images, this can be arranged.
Please note. BinaryText expects the character-attribute pairs to be
stored one row at a time. If you wanted to create a 80*100 Image, you
could do this by just copying 4 80*25 or 2 80*50 together to form one
bigger image.
If for example you wanted to create a 160*25 image from 2 80*25 images,
you would need to write a little program which would copy line 1 from
image 1, line 1 from image 2, Line 2 from Image 1, Line 2 from Image 2
and so on.
Basically, you should have all character-attribute pairs from one line
of the COMPLETE image one after the other, followed by all
char-attribute pairs from the next row, and so on.
If the picture does not fit this format. You should use the NONE
datatype. Besides, youd probably want to have it in this format
anyway, as it seems to be the most logical approach to have these kind
of images.
FLAGS for the BinaryText Datatype.
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A
All non-used bits should be ZERO.
A Non-blink mode iCE Color.
This bit has exactly the same meaning as for the Character
datatype. It indicates whether the picture uses iCE color.
COMMENTS
The comment block is an addition to the SAUCE record. It
holds up to 255 lines of additional information. Each line 64
characters wide.
When the Comments field is not zero, it holds the number of
additional comment lines are available. A single comment line is
64 characters long. Like the character fields in the SAUCE
record, it is padded with spaces, and has no leading length byte
or trailing null-byte.
The comment block is preceded with a 5 character identifi-
cation mark. This identification mark is COMNT.
SAUCE IN FILES
A file with SAUCE added to it. Will look like this:
FILE DATA Actual file data. As if it would be without SAUCE.
EOF MARKER EOF marker. This will assure character files can
easily determine the end of file.
COMMENT BLOCK Optional Comment block.
SAUCE RECORD SAUCE record.
The Comment block
COMNT Comment block ID bytes
COMMENTLINE 1 First comment line
COMMENTLINE 2 Second comment line
COMMENTLINE N n-th comment line, n equals the Comments field
in SAUCE record.
EXAMPLE CODE TO READ SAUCE
Variables:
Byte : Count
Long : FileSize
file : F
Code:
OpenFileF Open the file for read access
FileSize SizeoffileF Determine filesize
Seekfile F, FileSize-128 Seek to start of SAUCE Eof-128
ReadFile F, SAUCE Read the SAUCE record
IF SAUCE.IDSAUCE THEN ID bytes match SAUCE ?
IF SAUCE.Comments0 THEN Is there a comment block ?
SeekFileF, FileSize-128-SAUCE.Comments*64-5
Seek to start of Comment block.
ReadFileF, CommentID Read Comment ID.
IF CommentIDCOMNT THEN Comment ID matches COMNT ?
For Count1 to SAUCE.Comments Read all comment lines.
ReadFileF, CommentLine /
ENDFOR
ELSE
InvalidComment Non fatal, No comment present.
ENDIF
ENDIF
ELSE
InvalidSAUCE No valid SAUCE record was found.
ENDIF
SAUCE DATAFILE
The full specifications of the SAUCE datafile are not ready yet.
INFORMATION OR UPGRADES
If you have a need for additional information on SAUCE, or
need modifications, you can contact me at these places...
email: tasmaniac@acid.org
BBS:
Leave a message to TASMANIAC on any of these boards :
Neo Tokyo +32-50-620112 USR 28800 Dual
+32-50-625717 ZyXEL 19200
Sushi Bar Z +1-619-438-0114 USR 28800 Dual
+1-619-438-2879 USR 28800 Dual
Succotash +1-XXX-XXX-ACiD USR 33600 Dual
or contact one of our coders in the Utilities base via AgoraNet.
Acquisition Viewer 4.12
1 File deleting capabilities reimplemented.
2 Command line viewing mode added.
3 Mouse support while viewing images was enhanced.
4 More RIP fonts were added to the program.
5 Multiple SAUCE/File view options, with the TAB key.
6 Added screen capturing ability F10.
Acquisition Viewer 4.10
1 Multiple file tagging slideshow added.
2 A bug which added extra lines while scrolling ANSI in VGA was removed.
3 ANSI-VGA mode routines optimized for speed.
Acquisition Viewer 4.00b
1 Re-written from scratch, ACiD View presents a completely new version of
ACiD View. This edition offers all the features of previous versions
combined and more, with and interface that has the look and feel of
The Hit Mans final version of The Viewer. Although virtually all the
features are still here, the memory and disk space requirements have
been cut down to one third of its predecessor.
Acquisition Viewer 3.99
1 Finally detected and removed bug which causes the screen to shake while
using the bouncing interface.
Acquisition Viewer 3.06
1 Changes to multifriendly environment made.
Acquisition Viewer 3.05
1 ACiD View now loads maximum lines of text or ANSI, according to
free memory available rather than crashing to OS.
2 Other minor cosmetic changes made.
Acquisition Viewer 3.04
1 ACiD View reimplements imbedded RIP fonts, resulting in slightly
faster display, ease of configuration, but reducing available
memory by another 120k.
2 Fixed minor bug in the RIP parser.
3 Interface modified to display cleaner.
4 ACiD View forces multi-friendly mode when a Trident video card is
dectected due to its history of problems with the split screen
bouncing interface.
Acquisition Viewer 3.03
1 Support for Tab characters in ANSi parser Tab stops every 5 columns
2 Help screen is now avaible in multi-friendly mode
Acquisition Viewer 3.02
1 No longer uses a EGA text mode when VGA is avaible.
Acquisition Viewer 3.01
1 More code reduction, less memory used for code and smaller file.
2 File and directory indexing added. Entering a lowercase charactor
brings the selection bar to the first file begining with that letter.
A uppercase charactor does the same, except with directories.
3 Fixed a bug in the CFG parser. Did not recognise custom MASKs.
Acquisition Viewer 3.00
1 Initial release of a completely new ACiD View, coded by SiDS
Tasmaniac.
Acquisition Viewer 2.02
1 New RIP routines by Capn Crunch used in part with already exist-
ing source to accelerate display speed.
2 ACiD View now uses Tasmaniacs assembly source for SAUCE reading,
and increases the speed of on-the-fly definition loading.
3 Fixed ansimation mode bug.
4 Fixed mouse bug and other minute flaws.
Acquisition Viewer 2.01
1 New pull-down interface by Icy of ACiD Productions.
Acquisition Viewer 2.00
1 ACiD View takes on a hot new look in its new interface created by
Dr. Tongue of ACiD Productions. The layout has been completely
reconstructed, and now provides the end user with pull-downs and
the same familiar hot keys.
2 ACiD View now makes use of on-the-fly SAUCE definition loading.
This process will greatly increase your initialization speed on
computers that contain a multitude of files.
3 ACiD View now caters to mouse users, supporting a wide spectrum
of different mouse types.
4 ACiD View has recently been implemented with progress bars. Your
estimated position in the list of files or directories can now be
visually monitored with the help of the elevator located to the
right of the file/directory listing.
5 VESA SVGA viewing updated for 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768x256
modes. ACiD View supports the following chipsets as well as the
VESA standard mode: Ahead, ATI, Chips Tech, Everex, Genoa,
Paradise, Oak, Trident, TSeng, and Video7. If you have trouble
viewing in SVGA mode, try loading your video cards VESA driver.
6 All setup changes made during the run-time of ACiD View will be
saved upon exiting the program.
7 More minor bugs fixed.
Acquisition Viewer 1.50
1 ACiD View Control File support Added. ACiD View will now load
defaults from ACIDVIEW.INI.
2 Screen now displays the current directory.
3 Drive switching now added. ACiD View will show drives A: - Z:.
Including FLOPPY, SUBST, RAM, and other drives.
4 Command line Viewing is now supported! Type ACiDView /?
5 ND CHECK NO DELAY mode w/Error Checking display speed added.
This speed is the same as NO DELAY except it checks if ANSIs con-
tain lines with more than 255 characters per line.
Acquisition Viewer 1.40
1 Multitasking environment awareness implemented ie. DesqView and
OS/2.
2 Modem simulation routines are now disabled when ACiD View is loaded
under multitasking environments.
3 Directory switching added. Change directories simply by pressing
the return key.
4 File jumping and auto-sorting added. ACiD View will now jump to
the first file that begins with the character entered by the user.
5 640x480 viewing is now two times faster than version 1.32.
320x200 Normal Wide have also been optimized for speed.
Acquisition Viewer 1.32
1 Major bug erradicated in file reading routines.
2 Fixed the problem with the Viewer exiting if no files were found
matching the default mask. ACiDView will now simply display the
normal interface with no files, allowing you to MASK or exit until
you specify a valid file mask.
3 Fixed the key-reading loop with the 320x200 and 320x200 WIDE emu-
lations when ScrollBack was turned off.
Acquisition Viewer 1.30
1 File Masking added, allowing the user to select files within the
mask.
2 Added 320x200x256 ansimation mode.
3 Added modem simulator which emulates user-defined bps rate.
4 Minor bug corrected in the scroll back of large ANSIs.
5 Removed slow panning upon exit.
6 640x480x16 now FULLY supports ansimations. Small bug fixed.
Acquisition Viewer 1.20
1 Maximum number of files in one directory has been increased to
2,000.
2 A bug in the RIP portion of the viewer which caused the colors
of plotted objects to display improperly has been squashed.
3 RIP code has been optimized for speed, and it is now possible to
abort the screens.
4 Scrolled viewing has since been implemented, and 320x200x256 MCGA
display modes are now supported.
5 The old font has been replaced with a new character set, and a new
interface has been added which features icons.
Credits
Interface by: RaD Man and Skull Leader
Screens by: Lord Jazz
File Handling Baud Simulation by: Skull Leader
ANSI and BIN display and GIF Mode Detect by: Skull Leader
RIP Display routines by: Capn Crunch SiDS
Mode-X Primatives by: Matt Pritchard
Other Graphics Primatives, GIF PCX from Fastgraph by TGS
Compiled with Turbo Pascal v7.0
Bugs?
Did you find any bugs? If so, please write us at
acid-public@acid.org, or mail Skull Leader on any ACiD
affiliated system via AgoraNet.
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ACiD Productionstm Acquisition Enhanced File Viewer
Coded by Skull Leader and Tasmaniac
Screens by Lord Jazz
Documentation and Update History of ACiD Productions ACiD View
By SiDS and RaD Man of ACiD Productionstm
Current version of ACiD View : 4.12 / 01-01-199604:12
Note: This is a full release of ACiD View IV, but there is always the
possibility that you may encounter a bug or two. If you have
any questions, comments, suggestions or bug reports regarding this
release, please direct them to us at acid-public@acid.org via
the internet, or on the Utilities Discussion base on AgoraNet.
Introduction to ACiD View
ACiD View welcomes you to the most comprehensive Art View-
er in production. This innovative program is capable of dis-
playing ANSI, BIN, RIP and GIF graphics. In addition,
the viewer has been designed with a special interest for those
who multi-task. ACiD View utilizes its own internal ANSI
routines, making it capable of viewing ANSI without a separate
device driver. We hope that ACiD View provides you with as
much pleasure as we intended with its creation.
Features
Now supporting our very own special SAUCE
Command Line Viewing
Variable Speed ANSI Viewing
XMS Support
Slide Show Viewing File Tagging
Modem-Simulation for ANSI Viewing Doesnt affect multitaskers
Different file listing methods, including detailed information
File Masking Six possible masks
Drive and Directory switching
Level 0-1 RIP Viewing, with multiple fonts built in
Smoothscroll, Textscroll, and Autoscroll ANSI and BIN Viewing
25-, 28-, 30-, 35-, 43-, and 50-line mode ANSI and BIN Viewing
Fully-Features ANSI Scroll Back in several different video modes
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 80x25 or 80x50 text modes
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 320x200x256 MXGA mode
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 320x400x256 XGA mode
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 640x480x16 VGA mode
ANSI and BIN Viewing in 640x400, 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768x256
SVGA modes
GIF Viewing
Support for most SVGA chipsets and VESA
File deleting capability
Full mouse support
Screen capturing, in .GIF format.
Number of ANSI lines and files in a directory limited only by
how much memory is avaible.
Requires
EGA graphics preferably SVGA
286 or better processor
about 500K of conventional memory more memory bigger ANSIs
What ACiD View Displays
ACiD View will display ANSI screens in several different video
modes. These modes include the default, text mode, 640x480x16
VGA, 320x200x256 MCGA, 320x400x256 XGA, 640x400, 640x480,
800x600, and 1024x768x256 VESA SVGA modes. ACiD View also
supports most SVGA chipsets.
ACiD View displays most low level 0-1 RIP screens. Although
it will show all of the RIPs presented in the Acquisition, it
may not display some of the other RIPS you own. This is due
to the fact that some of the higher level RIP commands have
not been implemented. Several fonts including 8x8, Triplex,
Small Font, Sans Serif, Gothic, Simplex, Complex, European,
and Bold Outline have been added.
ACiD View can show GIF graphics files. The video mode for these
formats is selected automaticly. If a mode that is capable of
showing the entire picture is not found, the picture is not shown.
ACiD View Functions
Funtion Keys
Esc KeyPad
F1 Help
Exit Num Next Prev -
Lock Font Font Res F2 Switch Video Mode
Tab Home Up Page F3 Switch Font Size
Up
SAUCE Mode + F4 Switch Line Mode
Left Tag Right Res
File F5 Toggle Smoothscroll
Enter
End Down Page F6 Toggle Autoscroll
View File Down
Enter F7 Toggle BPS
Insert Del
F8 Toggle Color/Grey/BW
Space
F9 Toggle Ext/Blinking
Tag/Untag Files
F1 Quick-Help : Brief description of the keys.
F2 Video Mode : Selects the video mode that the selected ANSI
or BIN is to be viewed in. Note: GIF and PCX
will auto detect the appropriate mode, if a mode
large enough to fit the entire picture is not
found, the file is not displayed.
Text - 80x25 or 80x50 VGA text mode, depending on
the aspect ratio.
XGA - Displays in 320x200x256 tweaked Mode X mode.
MXGA - Displays in 320x400x256 tweaked Mode X mode.
VGA - Displays in 640x400x16 VGA mode.
SVGA1 - Displays in 640x400x256 SVGA mode
SVGA2 - Displays in 640x480x256 SVGA mode
SVGA3 - Displays in 800x600x256 SVGA mode
SVGA4 - Displays in 1024x768x256 SVGA mode
F3 Font Size : This determines the font size to be used while
displaying an ANSI in a VGA mode.
F4 Line Modes : Toggles which line mode will be used while
displaying ANSI in Text Video Mode.
F5 Smoothscroll : Toggles if the ANSI will be displayed line-by-line
or pixel-by-pixel in Text Video Mode.
F6 Autoscroll : Toggles if the ANSI will scroll down automatically
or if you must control the viewing manually.
F7 BPS Simulation : Changes the BPS simulation speed for ANSIs in
View mode.
F8 Color Mode : This is usually set to Color, however it can be
set to Grey to do greyscale or ASCII to strip
the color from ANSIs and BINs.
F9 Toggle Blink : Determines if 16 background colors instead of
blinking will be used for ANSI and BIN display.
F10 Capture Screen : When this is pressed when a ansi or rip is being
viewed, a image of the screen will be saved in
.GIF format, in the current directory. The file
name for this capture file is AVCAPXX.GIF where
XX is a number which increases with the number of
captured files. Note- This does not work during
viewing of an ansi in text mode, nor does it work
properly for VGA mode 320x400.
ACiD View Alternative Functions
ALT-D : When a file is selected, and this key combination
is pressed, a confirmation message will apear.
Hitting Y at this message will allow you do
delete the file.
TAB : Toggles between three different file display options
including regular with sauce, multiple columns,
and full file information.
ACiD View Command Line Viewing
ACiD View now allows the ability for command line viewing. There are
several option available. These option can be obtained by running
ACiD View with the -h, switch when calling ACiDVIEW
ACiDVIEW /R: /F: /C:C,G,A /SMOOTH /AUTO /B: @Filenames/Mask
ResolutionR FontF /C /SMOOTH
C Color Smooth Scroll
1 Text TEXT VGA G Grey /AUTO
2 320x200 A Ascii Auto Scroll
3 320x400 1 25L 1x2
4 640x400v 2 28L 2x2 @Filename - Text file containg list of files.
5 640x400 3 30L 1x4 One filename per line.
6 640x680 4 35L 2x4
7 800x600 5 43L 4x4 Filenames - Single file, or multiple.
8 1024x768 6 50L 4x8
Mask - Mask for files to view.
@Filename - This is the name of a regular text file containing a list of
files which are to be viewed, in respective order. This list
can contain the name of any file, ACiD View will automatically
determine which format the file is in. Wildcards are not
not supported in this text file. Invalid files will not be
displayed, just skipped over.
What is SAUCE?
Recipe for SAUCE
Chef cuisinier : Tasmaniac / ACiD
Maitre dhtel : Rad Man / ACiD
ANSis used to be just ANSis, pictures were just pictures,
loaders were just loaders and quite frankly, every file was just
as plain tasting as every other. This is about to change, how-
ever, because ACiD has decided to give their files an extra
je-ne-sais-quoi. In reality, well be adding SAUCE to every
file you can imagine.
Now, before we thoroughly confuse you, let us explain what we
are doing here. SAUCE stands for Standard Architecture for
Universal Comment Extensions. Although originally intended for
personal use in ANSis and RIP screens, early in the developement
of EFI Extended File Information it was decided that EFI should
be extended to have support for more than just ANSi and RIP
screens. Our brainchild was born and the specs were designed.
The only aspect left undecided was the name, and after rejecting
some very funny candidates, SAUCE was unanimously chosen. This
leads us to the big question in the sky, What is sauce? SAUCE
is a universal process to incorporate a full description for any
type of file. The most outstanding aspect of this concept is that
you have access to the complete file name, the files title, the
creation date, the creator of the file, the group that the creator
is employed by, and much, much, more.
A full explanation on how you can implement SAUCE is
described at the end of this document in the PLATES Programming
Language Architecture To Extract SAUCE section. Although you can
create your own programs to implement SAUCE to your files, we
recommend that you use the SPOON.EXE program to ensure a greater
universal compatibility.
SAUCE already supports a plethora of filetypes See PLATES.
If you have a need for the SAUCE specifications, please contact us
before you make the changes yourself. We will accomodate your
needs as soon as possible. After all, SAUCE is designed to become
a standard, and if people change the specs without allowing us to
make a complete update, there will be no standard. In the event
that we change SAUCE, we will quickly release a public update
which will most definately include an improved and updated
SPOON.EXE.
SAUCE has advantages over any other system in use. Each
description will be added to the file and will provide a file
description no matter what computer it is used for. SAUCE, how-
ever, also provides a back compatibility that uses a file with
descriptions for those files that do NOT already have a SAUCE
description. Processing in this manner is fully implemented in
SPOON.EXE and one can extract embedded SAUCE to this data file and
add SAUCE to files from this data file.
PLATES
Let us begin with a description of the record layouts used.
The record layouts and code examples are in a variated pascal
pseudo code, and should be transferrable enough to implement in
most other programming languages. For ease of reading, the
examples assume that the file is correct and that no error-
checking need be included. How rigorous you check for errors is
completely up to you, and will most likely depend on the file type
you are describing.
SAUCE RECORD
This portion of the documentation is about the SAUCE record.
The SAUCE record describes the file in short, and provides other
information not included in the SAUCE record itself.
A sauce record is EXACTLY 128 bytes in size.
Fieldname : Name of the field.
Size : Size of the field in BYTES
Type : Type of data. This can be :
BYTE : One byte unsigned numeric value 0 to 255
WORD : Two byte unsigned numeric value 0 to 65535
INTEGER : Two byte signed numeric value -32768 to 32767
LONG : Four byte signed numeric value -2147483648 to 2147483647
CHARACTER : One byte ASCII value. Longer character fields are
padded with spaces. It is NOT a PASCAL string with a
leading length byte, and its NOT a C-Style string
with a trailing nul-byte. A 10 byte character field
holding the text ANSI would look like this.
ANSI .
Numeric fields should be zero when not used, character fields
should be all spaces when not used.
V : SAUCE Version number. This indicates the version of
SAUCE when the field was implemented.
Description : Complete description of the field.
No fields are REQUIRED to be filled in except for ID, Version, FileSize,
DataType and FileType.
FieldName Size Type V Description
ID 5 Character 00 SAUCE Identification. This should be equal to
SAUCE or the record is not a valid SAUCE
record.
Version 2 Character 00 Version number of SAUCE. Current version is
00. As new features are added to the
specifications of SAUCE, this version number
will change. Future versions SHOULD remain
compatible with version 00 only ADDING on
the specifications, it is however not unlikely
that this compatibility is impossible to
maintain, but this is of no concern now.
Title 35 Character 00 Title of the file.
Author 20 Character 00 Name or handle of the creator of the file.
Group 20 Character 00 Name of the group the creator is employed by.
Date 8 Character 00 Date the file was created. This date is in
the format CCYYMMDD Century, year, month,
day. There is a good reason why the date
is in this format, but its not used in
version 00 of SAUCE. It will be used in
a future version of SAUCE.
FileSize 4 Long 00 Original filesize NOT including any
information of SAUCE.
DataType 1 Byte 00 Type of Data. See DATATYPES further on
FileType 1 Byte 00 Type of File. See DATATYPES further on
TInfo1 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 1 See DATATYPES
When used, this field holds informative
values. Any program using SAUCE should not
rely on these values being correct or filled
in.
TInfo2 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 2 See DATATYPES
TInfo3 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 3 See DATATYPES
TInfo4 2 Word 00 Numeric information field 4 See DATATYPES
Comments 1 Byte 00 Number of Comment lines See COMMENTS
Flags 1 Byte * 00 Flags indication optional settings/switches
These flags have different meaning depending
on the data type.
The flags werent originally in the concept
for Version 00 of SAUCE. but since the
specification of SAUCE expects all filler
bytes to be binary zero, the flags should be
set to ZERO in all previous files, and cause
no significant harm.
An Example PASCAL record looks like this:
TYPE SAUCERec RECORD
ID : Array1..5 of Char
Version : Array1..2 of Char
Title : Array1..35 of Char
Author : Array1..20 of Char
Group : Array1..20 of Char
Date : Array1..8 of Char
FileSize : Longint
DataType : Byte
FileType : Byte
TInfo1 : Word
TInfo2 : Word
TInfo3 : Word
TInfo4 : Word
Comments : Byte
Flags : Byte
Filler : Array1..22 of Char
END
An Example C record looks like this:
typedef SAUCEREC
char ID5
char Version2
char Title35
char Author20
char Group20
char Date8
signed long FileSize
unsigned char DataType
unsigned char FileType
unsigned int TInfo1
unsigned int TInfo2
unsigned int TInfo3
unsigned int TInfo4
unsigned char Flags
char Filler22
SAUCEREC
DATATYPES
DataType and FileType hold the information needed to deter-
mine what type of file it is.
There are 5 DataTypes, these are with their respective numeric values :
0 None : Undefined filetype, you could use this to add SAUCE
information to personal datafiles needed by programs,
but not having any other meaning.
1 Character : Any character based file. Examples are ASCII, ANSi and
RIP.
2 Graphics : Any bitmap graphic file. Examples are GIF, LBM, and
PCX.
3 Vector : Any vector based graphic file. Examples are DXF and
CAD files.
4 Sound : Any sound related file. Examples are samples, MOD
files and MIDI.
5 BinaryText: This is RAW memory copy of a text screen. Its
basically the BIN format you can save from whitin
TheDraw. Each character is built up of two consecutive
bytes. The first is the character to be displayed. The
second is the Attribute byte.
None
When using the None datatype, you should have FileType set to
zero also. This is a compatibility issue as its not unlikely,
the None datatype will have filetypes in the future.
Character
When using the Character datatype, you have following filetypes
available :
0 ASCII : Plain text file with no formatting codes or color codes.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of lines in the file.
1 ANSi : ANSi file. With ANSi color codes and cursor
positioning.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines
in the file.
2 ANSiMation: ANSi Animation. With ANSi color codes and cursor
positioning. While an ANSi file can also have animated
sequences, there is a clear distinction. While an ANSi
may or may not have a beginning animated sequence
introducing the group or artist the rest is just a
sequence of colored characters. An ANSiMation on the
other hand is a more like a text mode cartoon.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines
the ANSiMation was created for.
A program using SAUCE may use these two values to
switch to the appropriate video mode.
3 RIP : Remote Imaging Protocol RIP graphics file.
TInfo1 holds the width should be 640
TInfo2 holds the height should be 350
TInfo3 holds the number of colors should be 16
4 PCBoard : File with PCBoard style @X color codes and @ macros
and ANSi codes.
TInfo1 is used for the width of the file.
TInfo2 is used to hold the number of ANSi screen lines
in the file.
5 AVATAR : A file with AVATAR and ANSi color codes and cursor
positioning.
FLAGS for the Character Datatype.
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A
All non-used bits should be ZERO.
A Non-Blink mode iCE Color.
When this bit is SET equal to 1 The ANSi is created using iCE
color codes. This is a special mode where the blinking is
disabled, and you have 16 background colors available. Basically,
you have the same choice for background colors as for foreground
colors.
Please note:
When the picture does not make specific use of the iCE color, you
should NOT have this bit set. When you do not support the iCE
color mode, you should probably not display the file as it could
look pretty weird in normal mode.
Graphics
For all graphics types, TInfo1 holds width of the image, TInfo2
holds the Height of the image and TInfo3 holds the number of bits
per pixel a 256 colour image would have 8 bits per pixel, a
TrueColor image would have 24
Following Graphics filetypes are available :
0 GIF CompuServ Graphics Interchange format
1 PCX ZSoft Paintbrush PCX format
2 LBM/IFF DeluxePaint LBM/IFF format
3 TGA Targa Truecolor
4 FLI Autodesk FLI animation file
5 FLC Autodesk FLC animation file
6 BMP Windows Bitmap
7 GL Grasp GL Animation
8 DL DL Animation
9 WPG Wordperfect Bitmap
10 SBM SUN BitMap
11 JPG JPeg compressed File
12 MPG MPeg compressed animation/video
13 AVI Audio Visual Interlace
FLAGS
Not used, should be all zeroes.
Vector
Following Vector filetypes are available :
0 DXF CAD Data eXchange File
1 DWG AutoCAD Drawing file
2 WPG WordPerfect/DrawPerfect vector graphics
3 SVI Sun VectorImage
FLAGS
Not used, should be all zeroes.
Sound
Following sound filetypes are available :
0 MOD 4, 6 or 8 channel MOD/NST file
1 669 Renaissance 8 channel 669 format
2 STM Future Crew 4 channel ScreamTracker format
3 S3M Future Crew variable channel ScreamTracker3 format
4 MTM Renaissance variable channel MultiTracker Module
5 FAR Farandole composer module
6 ULT UltraTracker module
7 AMF DMP/DSMI Advanced Module Format
8 DMF Delusion Digital Music Format XTracker
9 OKT Oktalyser module
10 ROL AdLib ROL file FM
11 CMF Creative Labs FM
12 MIDI MIDI file
13 SADT SAdT composer FM Module
14 VOC Creative Labs Sample
15 WAV Windows Wave file
16 SMP8 8 Bit Sample, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
17 SMP8S 8 Bit sample stereo, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
18 SMP16 16 Bit sample, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
19 SMP16S 16 Bit sample stereo, TInfo1 holds sampling rate
20 PATCH8 8 Bit patch-file
21 PATCH1616 Bit Patch-file
FLAGS
Not used, should be all zeroes.
BinaryText
The Binary Text format, basically has no Filetype, since the datatype
has already defined how the file will look.
The FileType however specifies the WIDTH of the BinaryText screen.
Only the Width is required, as the Height can be calculated by dividing
the filesize by the Width.
In an attempt to provide as much WIDTH as possible in a possible 256
values of the Byte-sized FileType. The width is specified in Multiples
of 2. The fact that the Width is specified in multiples of 2 isnt
really a problem, since you also need to define the effective screen
size in multiples of 2.
An example : For normal 80*25 binary images as made with TheDraw the
FileType value would be 40 since 2*40 equals 80 g
All you need to do is divide the width of the binary text
image by 2. This gives a maximum width of 510 characters.
Although currently not supported, should there be a need
for even bigger images, this can be arranged.
Please note. BinaryText expects the character-attribute pairs to be
stored one row at a time. If you wanted to create a 80*100 Image, you
could do this by just copying 4 80*25 or 2 80*50 together to form one
bigger image.
If for example you wanted to create a 160*25 image from 2 80*25 images,
you would need to write a little program which would copy line 1 from
image 1, line 1 from image 2, Line 2 from Image 1, Line 2 from Image 2
and so on.
Basically, you should have all character-attribute pairs from one line
of the COMPLETE image one after the other, followed by all
char-attribute pairs from the next row, and so on.
If the picture does not fit this format. You should use the NONE
datatype. Besides, youd probably want to have it in this format
anyway, as it seems to be the most logical approach to have these kind
of images.
FLAGS for the BinaryText Datatype.
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A
All non-used bits should be ZERO.
A Non-blink mode iCE Color.
This bit has exactly the same meaning as for the Character
datatype. It indicates whether the picture uses iCE color.
COMMENTS
The comment block is an addition to the SAUCE record. It
holds up to 255 lines of additional information. Each line 64
characters wide.
When the Comments field is not zero, it holds the number of
additional comment lines are available. A single comment line is
64 characters long. Like the character fields in the SAUCE
record, it is padded with spaces, and has no leading length byte
or trailing null-byte.
The comment block is preceded with a 5 character identifi-
cation mark. This identification mark is COMNT.
SAUCE IN FILES
A file with SAUCE added to it. Will look like this:
FILE DATA Actual file data. As if it would be without SAUCE.
EOF MARKER EOF marker. This will assure character files can
easily determine the end of file.
COMMENT BLOCK Optional Comment block.
SAUCE RECORD SAUCE record.
The Comment block
COMNT Comment block ID bytes
COMMENTLINE 1 First comment line
COMMENTLINE 2 Second comment line
COMMENTLINE N n-th comment line, n equals the Comments field
in SAUCE record.
EXAMPLE CODE TO READ SAUCE
Variables:
Byte : Count
Long : FileSize
file : F
Code:
OpenFileF Open the file for read access
FileSize SizeoffileF Determine filesize
Seekfile F, FileSize-128 Seek to start of SAUCE Eof-128
ReadFile F, SAUCE Read the SAUCE record
IF SAUCE.IDSAUCE THEN ID bytes match SAUCE ?
IF SAUCE.Comments0 THEN Is there a comment block ?
SeekFileF, FileSize-128-SAUCE.Comments*64-5
Seek to start of Comment block.
ReadFileF, CommentID Read Comment ID.
IF CommentIDCOMNT THEN Comment ID matches COMNT ?
For Count1 to SAUCE.Comments Read all comment lines.
ReadFileF, CommentLine /
ENDFOR
ELSE
InvalidComment Non fatal, No comment present.
ENDIF
ENDIF
ELSE
InvalidSAUCE No valid SAUCE record was found.
ENDIF
SAUCE DATAFILE
The full specifications of the SAUCE datafile are not ready yet.
INFORMATION OR UPGRADES
If you have a need for additional information on SAUCE, or
need modifications, you can contact me at these places...
email: tasmaniac@acid.org
BBS:
Leave a message to TASMANIAC on any of these boards :
Neo Tokyo +32-50-620112 USR 28800 Dual
+32-50-625717 ZyXEL 19200
Sushi Bar Z +1-619-438-0114 USR 28800 Dual
+1-619-438-2879 USR 28800 Dual
Succotash +1-XXX-XXX-ACiD USR 33600 Dual
or contact one of our coders in the Utilities base via AgoraNet.
Acquisition Viewer 4.12
1 File deleting capabilities reimplemented.
2 Command line viewing mode added.
3 Mouse support while viewing images was enhanced.
4 More RIP fonts were added to the program.
5 Multiple SAUCE/File view options, with the TAB key.
6 Added screen capturing ability F10.
Acquisition Viewer 4.10
1 Multiple file tagging slideshow added.
2 A bug which added extra lines while scrolling ANSI in VGA was removed.
3 ANSI-VGA mode routines optimized for speed.
Acquisition Viewer 4.00b
1 Re-written from scratch, ACiD View presents a completely new version of
ACiD View. This edition offers all the features of previous versions
combined and more, with and interface that has the look and feel of
The Hit Mans final version of The Viewer. Although virtually all the
features are still here, the memory and disk space requirements have
been cut down to one third of its predecessor.
Acquisition Viewer 3.99
1 Finally detected and removed bug which causes the screen to shake while
using the bouncing interface.
Acquisition Viewer 3.06
1 Changes to multifriendly environment made.
Acquisition Viewer 3.05
1 ACiD View now loads maximum lines of text or ANSI, according to
free memory available rather than crashing to OS.
2 Other minor cosmetic changes made.
Acquisition Viewer 3.04
1 ACiD View reimplements imbedded RIP fonts, resulting in slightly
faster display, ease of configuration, but reducing available
memory by another 120k.
2 Fixed minor bug in the RIP parser.
3 Interface modified to display cleaner.
4 ACiD View forces multi-friendly mode when a Trident video card is
dectected due to its history of problems with the split screen
bouncing interface.
Acquisition Viewer 3.03
1 Support for Tab characters in ANSi parser Tab stops every 5 columns
2 Help screen is now avaible in multi-friendly mode
Acquisition Viewer 3.02
1 No longer uses a EGA text mode when VGA is avaible.
Acquisition Viewer 3.01
1 More code reduction, less memory used for code and smaller file.
2 File and directory indexing added. Entering a lowercase charactor
brings the selection bar to the first file begining with that letter.
A uppercase charactor does the same, except with directories.
3 Fixed a bug in the CFG parser. Did not recognise custom MASKs.
Acquisition Viewer 3.00
1 Initial release of a completely new ACiD View, coded by SiDS
Tasmaniac.
Acquisition Viewer 2.02
1 New RIP routines by Capn Crunch used in part with already exist-
ing source to accelerate display speed.
2 ACiD View now uses Tasmaniacs assembly source for SAUCE reading,
and increases the speed of on-the-fly definition loading.
3 Fixed ansimation mode bug.
4 Fixed mouse bug and other minute flaws.
Acquisition Viewer 2.01
1 New pull-down interface by Icy of ACiD Productions.
Acquisition Viewer 2.00
1 ACiD View takes on a hot new look in its new interface created by
Dr. Tongue of ACiD Productions. The layout has been completely
reconstructed, and now provides the end user with pull-downs and
the same familiar hot keys.
2 ACiD View now makes use of on-the-fly SAUCE definition loading.
This process will greatly increase your initialization speed on
computers that contain a multitude of files.
3 ACiD View now caters to mouse users, supporting a wide spectrum
of different mouse types.
4 ACiD View has recently been implemented with progress bars. Your
estimated position in the list of files or directories can now be
visually monitored with the help of the elevator located to the
right of the file/directory listing.
5 VESA SVGA viewing updated for 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768x256
modes. ACiD View supports the following chipsets as well as the
VESA standard mode: Ahead, ATI, Chips Tech, Everex, Genoa,
Paradise, Oak, Trident, TSeng, and Video7. If you have trouble
viewing in SVGA mode, try loading your video cards VESA driver.
6 All setup changes made during the run-time of ACiD View will be
saved upon exiting the program.
7 More minor bugs fixed.
Acquisition Viewer 1.50
1 ACiD View Control File support Added. ACiD View will now load
defaults from ACIDVIEW.INI.
2 Screen now displays the current directory.
3 Drive switching now added. ACiD View will show drives A: - Z:.
Including FLOPPY, SUBST, RAM, and other drives.
4 Command line Viewing is now supported! Type ACiDView /?
5 ND CHECK NO DELAY mode w/Error Checking display speed added.
This speed is the same as NO DELAY except it checks if ANSIs con-
tain lines with more than 255 characters per line.
Acquisition Viewer 1.40
1 Multitasking environment awareness implemented ie. DesqView and
OS/2.
2 Modem simulation routines are now disabled when ACiD View is loaded
under multitasking environments.
3 Directory switching added. Change directories simply by pressing
the return key.
4 File jumping and auto-sorting added. ACiD View will now jump to
the first file that begins with the character entered by the user.
5 640x480 viewing is now two times faster than version 1.32.
320x200 Normal Wide have also been optimized for speed.
Acquisition Viewer 1.32
1 Major bug erradicated in file reading routines.
2 Fixed the problem with the Viewer exiting if no files were found
matching the default mask. ACiDView will now simply display the
normal interface with no files, allowing you to MASK or exit until
you specify a valid file mask.
3 Fixed the key-reading loop with the 320x200 and 320x200 WIDE emu-
lations when ScrollBack was turned off.
Acquisition Viewer 1.30
1 File Masking added, allowing the user to select files within the
mask.
2 Added 320x200x256 ansimation mode.
3 Added modem simulator which emulates user-defined bps rate.
4 Minor bug corrected in the scroll back of large ANSIs.
5 Removed slow panning upon exit.
6 640x480x16 now FULLY supports ansimations. Small bug fixed.
Acquisition Viewer 1.20
1 Maximum number of files in one directory has been increased to
2,000.
2 A bug in the RIP portion of the viewer which caused the colors
of plotted objects to display improperly has been squashed.
3 RIP code has been optimized for speed, and it is now possible to
abort the screens.
4 Scrolled viewing has since been implemented, and 320x200x256 MCGA
display modes are now supported.
5 The old font has been replaced with a new character set, and a new
interface has been added which features icons.
Credits
Interface by: RaD Man and Skull Leader
Screens by: Lord Jazz
File Handling Baud Simulation by: Skull Leader
ANSI and BIN display and GIF Mode Detect by: Skull Leader
RIP Display routines by: Capn Crunch SiDS
Mode-X Primatives by: Matt Pritchard
Other Graphics Primatives, GIF PCX from Fastgraph by TGS
Compiled with Turbo Pascal v7.0
Bugs?
Did you find any bugs? If so, please write us at
acid-public@acid.org, or mail Skull Leader on any ACiD
affiliated system via AgoraNet.
FILE
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PREVIEW
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- title
- ACiD View Documentation
- author
- RaD Man
- group
- ACiD Productions
- date
- 1996-01-01
- comments
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- character
- filetype
- ascii
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