TheDraw - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

This is a revised mirror of "TheDraw" at Wikipedia:

TheDraw is an editor for MS-DOS to create ANSI art and ANSImations as well as ASCII art. The editor is especially useful to create or modify files in ANSI format and text documents, which use the graphical characters of the IBM ASCII code pages, because they are not supported by Microsoft Windows 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] 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.

The program is stable in an MS-DOS window under Windows XP and allows the user to maintain mouse control. Used with Windows Vista however, TheDraw performs with less predictable results. It works with DOSBox.

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 and ANSI fonts to be used within the editor
  • Additional file formats in addition to ANSI (.ANS) and text (.ASC).
  • The proprietary PCBoard (.PCB) and Wildcat! BBS (.BBS) file formats.
  • The AVATAR (.AVT) file standard defined by FidoNet.
  • Save files for various programming languages, including Assembly (.ASM), C (.H) and Turbo Pascal (.PAS).
  • Ability to save ANSIs as .COM binary, .BIN and object code (.OBJ).
  • Other supported formats: BSave (.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: Interview with Ian Davis, creator of TheDraw, by RaD Man of ACiD Productions, May 26, 1992, RM: Do you mind if I ask, what is your current occupation? ID: I'm an electronic engineer, I design digital hardware. I design computers, and I program the computers.

...

Cthulu's notes on TheDraw. Specifically, why consider it in a post-ACiDDraw world?

  • TheDraw is, as far as I know, the only ANSI art editor of any kind to support [ANSImation] with a suite of built-in tools. As well as native support starting from scratch, helpfully, you can provide pre-drawn static 80x25 ANSI screens and use TheDraw to splice them together. (You can also save static screens with ANSImated transitions.)

  • [TDF] stands for TheDraw Font, a format saving an entire alphabet's worth of crude pre-drawn ANSI art / ASCII art letters and allowing you to type on the screen with them as with any other kind of font. The stock selection of TDF fonts that shipped with the editor were underwhelming, but in a misguided effort cementing his notoriety, Roy/SAC went to great lengths to extend classic ANSI art logos into complete TDF font sets without consent or input or awareness of the original logo designers. This makes TDF fonts a handy tool for BBS SysOps who don't mind stepping on the toes of old elite artists. TDF font sets have in recent years also begun to see support from [figlet]-like software.

  • TheDraw supported an astronomical range of file types to save your illustration as, not just including the standard .ANS and the useful-to-programmers .BINary format, but also many flavours of BBS-specific [pipe code]s, which could be handy for SysOps trying to update their menus. Notably, you could also save a single ANSI screen as a .COM executable, which would simply display the screen when invoked from the command line.

  • TheDraw wasn't just an integrated ANSI art editor, but a suite of tools. One included program, TheGrab, was a TSR program that would allow users to "capture" textmode screens from other textmode programs, and screenshot them in an ANSI editor-friendly format.