[MUD-Dev] Re: Ansii color, needing some specs and or pointers.

[Chris Gray]

[Ben Greear:]

 >The players keep yelping at me to provide some ansi color, but I'm
 >clueless on the art, so I thought I'd see if any of you had any
 >pointers?  Surely I'm not the only one to be faced with this
 >scourge!

Yeah, I had requests for that too. So, I whined at one of the requesters
that I didn't know what he meant. So he sent me a spec and an example.
Rats! I never did do it though - it seemed silly to add something like
that to a multimedia system. Anyway, here is most of the email he
sent me (I'm sure he won't mind contributing to this list!)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I promised to send you the ANSI codes I used in my BBS, well I decided to=
 give all the possible ANSI codes, just for being complete.

Ok here they are:
--------------------------------------
M A X's BBS supports all the ANSI colour codes plus some cursor movement =
codes (Which I don't use and are generally very rare, so you don't need t=
o include these!, Mati). All ANSI codes begin with two characters "Escape=
" (^[) and "[", the following codes are optional numbers reperated by a s=
emi colon (;) and terminated with an "m" for a colour code, "A, B, C, or =
D" for a delta cursor movement or "H" for cursor position. The colour cod=
es can be as long as you like and are terminated with the "m" character.

eg:

<Esc>[n;n...m

<Esc> - the "Escape" (^[) character
[ - The "[" character
n - A number (see below)
; - Seperate numbers
m - Terminates the ANSI colour code

Where the "n" is a number representing a colour or attribute. Here are th=
e available colours:

30 - Black foreground
31 - Red foreground
32 - Green foreground
33 - Yellow foreground
34 - Blue foreground
35 - Magenta foreground
36 - Cyan foreground
37 - White foreground
40 - Black background
41 - Red background
42 - Green background
43 - Yellow background
44 - Blue background
45 - Magenta background
46 - Cyan background
47 - White background

Here are the available attributes:

0 - All attributes off (normal white on black)
1 - Bold on (high intensity)
3 - Italics on
4 - Underscore on
5 - Blink on (or italic if flashing text is turned off)
7 - Reverse video on (swaps foreground and background)

For a delta cursor movement the ANSI string is similar to the above, exce=
pt that you can only have one number and the termination character gives =
the direction of movement:

A - Cursor move up by n (north)
B - Cursor move down by n (south)
C - Cursor move right by n (east)
D - Cursor move left by n (west)

eg:

<Esc>[10A
The cursor will move up by ten lines

For cursor position the ANSI string is terminated by the "H" character:

eg:

<Esc>[n1;n2H
n1 - Row (line)
n2 - Column
If the number for both delta cursor movement and cursor position are zero=
 (0) or ommited, then they will default to one (1).

Changes from version 1.00 to version 1.10:

* The ANSI cursor position code now accepts just a row number and no colu=
mn number.

eg:

<Esc>[20H

Changes from version 1.16 to version 1.18:

* The ANSI codes "<Esc>[2J" and "<Esc>[2K" have been implemented. Some do=
or programs use these codes.

---------------------------------------------------
(source: MAX's BBS guide, by Anthony Barrett converted to AmigaGuide form=
at by Greg Fitch)

Sorry I had to include all these in the letter, Multiview just doesn't wa=
nt to copy a piece of text to a file, all had to be typed, I dropped the =
page layout, because on Email, it probably doesn't show up well.

I've also included a UUEncoded ANSI file, so you can test, hav a look at =
it.

Greeting from Holland! =


--BOUNDARY.6913.1425.4014360.2
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="Intro.text"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: x-uue
Content-Description:: : An ANSI example file.

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

--
Chris Gray     cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA