splitting drawing program into data and engine

[tsh73]

You should already know that drawing operators of Just / Liberty BASIC are passed to a graphicbox / graphic window as text.
Plain text, readable by humans.
That might be slow - window should interpret commands from strings.
But that gives some possibilities other languages do not have.

Have you seen printform.bas example?
62 lines of graphic commands, not counting inner loop that draw labels/boxes

Any drawing command looks like
#form "place 1 471"
- like a text printed to #form !

Now, watch my hands
I take source program printform.bas
And change
open "Printable Form" for graphics as #form
to
fileName$="data01.txt"
   open fileName$ for output as #form
, and instead of sending stuff to printer
confirm "Send to printer?"; answer
   if answer then #form "print svga"
I close this file
and run it in notepad
close #form
   run "notepad.exe "+ fileName$
I got some 85 lines, like this (first fiew)
down
backcolor 220 220 220
size 2
place 1 1 ; boxfilled 700 110
font arial 16 bold
place 20 34
\Software Mail-in Order Form
These lines are drawing commands. And now they are in a file, separated from a program!

Now if we read that file line-by-line and feed that ionto graphicbox/graphic window, we recreate that print form on a screen.

And whole code (engine!) will be just that
   nomainwin
   WindowWidth = 800
   WindowHeight = DisplayHeight
   open "Printable Form" for graphics as #form
   fileName$="data01.txt"
   open fileName$ for input as #inFile
   #form "trapclose [quit]"

   while not(eof(#inFile))
       line input #inFile, aLine$
       #form aLine$
   wend
   close #inFile

   #form "flush"
   confirm "Send to printer?"; answer
   if answer then #form "print svga"
   wait
   end

[quit]
   close #form
   end


Looks cool for me.

[cundo]

Ah I see !!! an interpreter of graphics commands that are stored in a text file. Useful to update programs in Exe format.

[plus]

very interesting

b = b + ...

[Enzo]

Sept 23, 2023 19:56:19 GMT cundo said:

Ah I see !!! an interpreter of graphics commands that are stored in a text file. Useful to update programs in Exe format.

I've considered this type of method for my game ive been making, maybe even user created sprites at some point.



This could be used to create a ide editor color based with hiding the controls and using input variable.