Draw utility

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Draw Utility is a type-in art program from the 5 January 1985 issue of Personal Computer News (UK). The program is part drawing tool, part graphic loading tool; with the latter being re-useable in other software. The application is therefore able to be used to produce graphics in BASIC games and other software; at the user's discretion.

Controls

The cursor, which defines where lines, etc both start and end, is controlled with the arrow keys. The program has a number of features, each accessed via a single keypress.

  • P - Select a Picture (from 0 to 9)
  • D - Draw the selected picture on screen
  • F - Finish the selected picture and move on to the next
  • L - Set the starting point for drawing a line or arc
  • E - Set the end point for the line or arc and draw it
  • R - Set the first corner for drawing a rectangle
  • M - Set the opposite corner for drawing a rectangle, then draw it as a filled rectangle
  • I - Partial infill (see below)
  • T1 - Mark the first point of a triangle
  • T2 - Mark the second point of a triangle
  • T3 - Mark the third point of a triangle, then draw it
  • Z - Clear the screen
  • K - Re-draw the previous picture number, starting at the current cursor position
  • X - Delete the last command (clear the screen and re-draw using D to see the effect)
  • B - Set the border colour
  • C - Change the ink colour
  • G - Display the cursor co-ordinates
  • U - Display the length of the picture buffer space that has been used so far
  • K - Save/Load picture buffer

The Partial Infill Function

Infilling does not work the same way as a modern art package's 'bucket fill' tool would. Instead this function will draw a curve from the current cursor position back to the last position set as the starting position using the line tool. This allows very accurate in-filling, but can be confusing on first use.

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