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Oric Character Generator

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 2:10 pm
by peacer
After a of period of time, I finished one of my dream project of Oric Character Generator for PC. I had chance to do this because I broke my ankle bone. I have to stay at home for another month so I try to build this application.

Image

This utility is aimed to load/edit/design Oric font characters with different tools by using PC facilities.

Its mainly based on our beloved Twilighte's CHED90 utility. So I include every tools that Jonathan implemented in that utility.

Usage of the program is not hard.

First you need to load default or alternative set of characters.

Then you select the characters one by one and edit the font with clicking on the font matrix or toolbox tools.

You can copy & paste from one char to another. Shift or rotate to X and Y axis either way. Mirroring in 2 axis is also possible. You can fill the font with random pixels or reset to its original.

Its possible to load from .TAP files saved from emulator. You can save the char data as oric .TAP file and use it with your programs too. I include some font files that I created or edited with this tool too.

I tried to implement an "animation tool" to see selected characters as font matrices one another but couln't make it for now. Maybe I will try that in future versions, if you like it.

I am open for all advices and modifications.

Best Wishes
Char Editor.rar
(129.97 KiB) Downloaded 547 times

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 9:19 pm
by Chema
Hey! That is nice! Thanks for sharing it :)

I will have a look at it asap.

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 9:41 pm
by Symoon
Looks nice!
What language did you program it with?

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:11 pm
by Godzil
Symoon wrote:Looks nice!
What language did you program it with?
I would say VB6 but I may be wrong.. :D

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 10:11 pm
by iss
Thanks, peacer! Nice and very useful tool.
The language is MS Visual Basic - I had missing MSVBVM60.DLL and COMDLG32.OCX,
but this is my local problem after I added them everything works fine.
May I suggest to add an option so it's possible to switch between Hex and Dec representation of
the values for ASCII code and character row bytes? ;)

PS: ... and take care of your ankle!

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 11:06 pm
by peacer
Yes, VB6 :)

From my early experience with Oric, BASIC was always my language to choose. later on, GWBASIC, QBASIC, Quick Basic, VB3 and at last VB6. After that, it is beyond my experience like VB.NET etc.

Thanks for your compliments !

@ iss, I forget to include MSVBVM60.DLL and COMDLG32.OCX , sorry about that. I will include them in the rar file when I add that HEX-DEC switch. If it's useful, I can make an option to copy the data together into clipboard, or into a textbox area. Do you mean hex format as in Oric like #FF or visual programming format like &HFF ?

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 6:09 am
by coco.oric
Nice build, thanks a lot for sharing this tool.

Is it possible to add an option without tap format but only dat file ?
or to save in .c or .s format to osdk and cc65 ?

Didier

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 7:30 am
by iss
My personal taste is just 'FF' :).
+1 for coco.oric wish for raw format and if possible *.C and/or *.S compatible export.

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 8:01 am
by peacer
.dat is quite possible, I can remove .TAP start sequence and save only the data. But I don't know how .C or .S format is..

can you give me an example?

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 8:22 am
by iss
C/C++:

Code: Select all

unsigned char FontName[] = {
   1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,
   0x1,0x2, ..., (for hex)
   .....
};
ASM/S using XA syntax:

Code: Select all

FontName    .byt 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
            .byt $01,$02,... (for hex)

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 8:33 am
by peacer
Can you give detail a bit.. I am confused ..

unsigned char FontName[] = {
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,
0x1,0x2, ..., (for hex)
.....
};

I have ascii of char and 8 bytes data for each. How this data should looks like then?

e.g.

Code: Select all

unsigned char Bold[] = {
63,60,30,30,45,40,50,50
0,0,21,42,21,0,0,0
..
..
..
(All 90 chars data here)?
};
Also how can I determine standart or alternative set, which data is for which font?

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 9:48 am
by iss
Your example is OK, only ',' should be on every line excluding the last one, i.e:

Code: Select all

unsigned char Bold[] = {
 63,60,30,30,45,40,50,50,  <---- ',' here, these are 8 bytes for the first character in the set
 0,0,21,42,21,0,0,0,  <---- ',' here, these are 8 bytes for the second character in the set
 ..
 ..
 ..
 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 <--- NO ',' here, these are 8 bytes for the last 96th char in standard set
};
For the alternate set you can store only 80 definitions (80*8=640 bytes total).

BTW, .C ans .S are ONLY to be exported, there is no need to be able to open and read data from them.

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 10:05 am
by peacer
Ok. Lets see what might it will look like :)

can it be like 63,60,30,30,45,40,50,50,50,50,40,40,30,40........................ 90x8 = 720 byte data in on line?

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 11:52 am
by iss
Sure, one line is ok for compilers. It's just little bit inconvenient for reading by human,
but there are source code formatters - so no problem at all :).

Re: Oric Character Generator

Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 12:56 pm
by Dbug
If there's a binary format, you can still call Bin2Txt (in the OSDK bin folder) to get whatever C or S format you want :)