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NULL mag Issue 05 09 Tribute to Gutter
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Didn't know about gutter, not at the time it was been released. I
learned about it, long time after. Many people like that emag and i am
one of them. One thing i really liked, it was the thing that the
authors of the mag, released the source code to the public, so
everyone can use it or take ideas from it. So when i decided to make
NULL a DOS emag, i grabbed a copy of that code to see what others did
and how should or could, do it my self.
The thing with gutter is that it has a simple enough code. The most
difficult part of it, perhaps its the savefile format and how its
being used to read the articles. Anything else is straightforward even
for beginners.
So how this file is created, used, what are the benefits from it and
what are the disadvantages. First of all, i have to admit that is a
clever design. Inside the file are the files of the articles and
ansis, in binary format.
Binary format is used in TheDraw and AcidDraw. Its a specific format.
Each "line" is 160 bytes long. The first byte is a character, the
second is the color attribute of this character. The third byte is the
second character, fourth byte the color for the second character etc.
So it has a format like this: CACACACACACACA... where C is a character
and A the color attribute. If we have an ansi image 25 lines long, the
size of it, in this binary format will be 25 * 160 = 4000bytes.
But why use this format? Because in DOS there is a video memory
address, which keeps the data of the text displayed in the screen, in
exactly the same format. So, if you copy a binary ansi file, into that
location, it will look exactly as in an ANSI editor, with colors. So
you don't have to do any ansi parsing, and translate the escape
sequences. They used TheDraw/AciDDraw to "translate" the file once.
After that, the file can be copied, directly to the video memory...
and you have graphics!
So, all files for gutter, are saved in a big, huge file in this
format. But to know where is each file and keep some info, like the
title/author a header is needed. A header is something like an
index/catalog, that keeps record of where each file is, the size of
it, tile, author etc. To access an article saved in the data file, we
have to read the header first and with the info obtained, then someone
could access the article data.
Because of DOS and Turbo Pascal limitations, the article or an ansi
image, couldb't be longer than 406 lines. Why? because...
406 lines * 160 bytes/line = 64960bytes. And in Pascal you could only
access 65K at once. I didn't remember that, but because one article of
mine was big enough, i noticed that weird things happened. The gutter
code, was reading the whole article into memory in one step, so it
couldn't be more than 65K. To bypass that, i had to access the
articles from the disk and not from the memory. Instead of loading the
article text into a memory chunk, i just read it from within the data
file, every time the user accesses it, by pressing up/down/pgup/pgdn
keys.
Back then, making so many reads (every time a key was pressed) it was
very slow, cause the file was read from a floppy disk or a very slow
hard disk. Now days, its very fast and also, other techiques like
caching are used. So its not big deal to access the file every time.
Its the only easy alternative to read big article files, without using
XMS memory, which has other disadvantages and it was very time
consuming for me to read and learn again, knowledge of the past ;)
To make the engine even cooler i wanted to use screen FXs and also
different fonts. The screen fxs are just code and its an easy process,
if you get the habit of how the video memory in DOS works. But saving
the fonts in the data file was a tricky thing, cause i wanted to leave
the "gutter article system" as it was. For both systems (font &
article) to work together, i thought to implement the font system, at
the end of the file in a backward way.
I made some alterations to the tool which is responsible for "compiling"
the articles. After completed the article compilation and it stores
each font file at the end of the data file. After storing all font
files, it writes a header, to know the location of each font file. Now
the font engine, reads the font header from the end of the file and by
knowing where each font file is, we can access it... and all that in
one data file, with out changing the "gutter engine". Also did some
small changes here and there, but not anything too big. The two big
changes are the font system and making the "article reader" to handle
files larger than 65kb.
Perhaps you will be wondering, why the fuck this article is here and
not in the tutors section... (if you weren't, now you are :p ). Well,
because i wanted to show you, that open source code can be revived,
re-used, make it better, read it, think about it, process it and more.
If the authors of Gutter, didn't made the source code available,
probably i will had to "re-invent the wheel" and re-wrote the same
thing, without knowing about it. This piece of code is a part of a
unique history to some of us and by being able to "read it in depth"
for me is like a trip in the past. To see how things worked under DOS,
what the limitations were and how far we have gone, all this time.
This gives an appreciation on what we had and what we have now. Kids
today, have smartphones and console games with CPUs that we couldn't
even dream about it.. and thus present coders/programmers became
sloppy.
I am sure that Gutter creators, wouldn't imagine that after 10-20
years from that time, some "geek" will find their code, and use it to
make an emag and even have the will to evolve it, add stuff and make
it even better. And that's the magic of making your code open to
others... no licenses and shit like that.
Also i wanted to show you, that DOS is a cool way to write programs
that someone can run everywhere, through a DOS emulator. Specially for
us the "text-mode enthusiasts", using text mode apps with full ansi
graphics/colors, even in a smartphone is coooooolllll!!!!! :)
So, this article is not a tribute only to those who made Gutter
possible, but to all those who make open source code. Source code is a
form of writing, so its also a piece of our past, not just as a scene,
but as a species. Source code is a sign of our intelligence... or even
stupidity... it all depends on how Skynet will evolve/appear...
hahahahaha :)
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