ANSIED - Yet Another ANSI Editor

Ok, I know there are lots of BBS-oriented ANSI editors out there. But
I couldn't find one that worked the way I thought it should (familiar
story?)

An ANSI editor should be easily used as a "coloring" tool-- to take
plain, unexciting text (like bulletins, menus, etc.) and liven 'em up
a bit. It should support box graphics (that is, know how to actually
draw boxes and intersecting lines in a variety of styles), should
allow you to independently work with text and color (so that the
content can be worked first, then color added easily), and it should
be cheap (i.e., free), yet include source code. It should let you
READ IN those "almost-Ok" ANSI menus that came with your BBS, "fix"
them, and save them again.

Yup. This is it. It's free, it's in C, and it's yours.

To use it, you must have your ANSI.SYS driver installed. The editor
simply passes your input file through to DOS, expecting the ANSI
driver to do its thing. It then "reads" the CGA-compatible screen to
fill in its text and color tables. It then lets you use a variety of
(old-time) WordStar-like commands and function keys to play with the
text and/or color. Finally, it saves your work by playing the text
back to the output file while inserting ANSI color commands as it goes
(pretty primitive, actually).

Everything else should be self-explanatory (famous last words), or
easy to figure out, anyway. There's help, labelled function keys,
selection lists for colors and special characters, and you can always
look at the source if you like. You might even find a use for some of
the subroutines. They came (originally) from a cute little C forms
package called "formgen" (which is also available for free).

Have fun!

John Queern
Belleville, IL
CIS: 70120,107
BBS: (618)277-1162