EasyPtr was created in 1991 by Albin Hesser. It was a major revolution when it came to programming the pointer environment. It combined some powerful new SuperBasic keywords with an actual WYSIWYG editor to design all the menus. I was around 12 at the time and I actually still remember the excitement I had about finally being able to write programs that made use of WMAN. In 2004 I had the honour of updating the suite to deal with all the new features I implemented for WMAN2. And now, for the first time ever, it’s available for free (announcement and history)! Enjoy:
Files: EasyPtr4.zip
Manual: EasyPtr4.pdf
EasyMenu -=-=-=-= 4.00 Allows entry of high colour values. These are entered by their hex value and prepended by a $ character, i.e. "$020e". New menu elements default to their system palette colours Window sprite defaults to arrow system sprite Background and object colour chooser use SMSQ/E palette colours ... probably much more that I forgot 4.01 Implemented scaling flag handling. Scale flags are extracted on load and re-integrated on save. They can be manipulated in the list mode menu. Implemented GD2 sprite support. Max object size remains 32kb! Implemented system sprites support as pre-defined objects Allows values bigger than 999 in list mode Colour chooser now uses aurora hardware palette RGB colours Some minor fixes "Mode" button disabled in high colour mode 4.02 Application window item and arrow/bar colours now correctly default to the corresponding system palette colours. Full colour input now possible for appwin arrows/bars, too Scaling flags for the initial pointer position can now be specified at the origin values for the layout. Those do not use scaling anyway Object chooser window now bigger and resizable 4.03 Object chooser window now auto resizes to automatically accomodate bigger sprites Objects can now be larger than 32kb 4.04 Due to popular request EasyMenu main window size is now both configurable and resizeable Now disallows setting of pointer sprites bigger than 64x64 Problem fixed when pointer sprite does not fit in window Fixed bug on systems with more than 16MB main memory Fixed memory corruption on application menu removal Does not create bars anymore if application menu dialog is left with OK instead of ESC after removing a menu Config block is now level 2 4.05 DO on resize icon maximises/restores window In high colour, MODE button now switches between the 4 system palettes and one inbuilt colour scheme Menu elements of application windows can now also be scaled. Scales can be entered by prepending the hit size/spacing values with "x:" where x is a value from 0 to 4, i.e. "4:100" for an 100 pixel wide menu element that will be scaled 1:1. Fixed grabbing of menu definitions from open channels on recent SMSQ/Es Fixed crash on information object text input (when inobj is too small) Loaded menus now default to the left side instead of the right Some minor fixes concerning application window menus Experimental: EM background colour now also affects EM loose items New default background colour 4.06 EM window moveable Fixed white colour scheme Selected system palette number now visible in mode button 4.07 New attributes window with many different colour selection modes AppWin: section numbers are not limited anymore if "only bars" is chosen Some minor fixes 4.08 Increased size of list menu to 8 lines Various fixes New "fixed" palette which equals the default SMSQ/E "pal" palette but results in fixed RGB values instead of variable pal indexes. Basic background can now be used even if EM does not cover this area 4.09 Minimum loose item size is 0x0 again Fixed size/origin change of layout in direct menu Fixed creation of new inf/app windows in direct menu Potential memory coruption on systems with more than 16MB fixed 4.10 When moving items in list mode, scaling flags were not correctly moved along 4.11 Fixed bug that caused long loading time on Q68 4.12 Fixed _msc sprite collection support EasySprite -=-=-=-=-= 4.00 GD2 compliant (but can still only design 4 and 8 colour sprites!) Supports both mode 4 and 8 sprites when running in a high colour mode 4.01 Disabled "cut out" menu in high colour mode Some minor fixes Basic extension -=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 4.00 MAWDRAW et al now accept GD2 sprites Fixed MWINDOW #x,-1 Experimental: "WMOV -1" to use WMAN window move routine Fixed various colour problems Made MAWDRAW compatible with single-item array slices, ie array$(0 TO 0) 4.01 MCALLT does not return NOT COMPLETE anymore in case of a timeout New keyword WSIZE to allow standard menu resizing 4.02 Fixed MDRAW problem with scaling flags in window definition 4.03 MAWDRAW et al now limits start column/row to sane values MAWDRAW et al: some fixes for border cases MAWDRAW et al: fixes for array spacing lists MINPUT now accepts dimensioned strings (and thus can be used with Turbo) 4.04 WMOV#ch,-1 now doesn't reposition the ptr anymore MAWxxx,MWINDOW,MWLINK: '\' separator does not clear window anymore 4.05 MAWDRAW et al: Further fix for array spacing list (hope that was all now!) 4.06 One more minor MAWDRAW fix for single-item sliced string arrays MWINDOW/MWLINK now again sets the paper/strip/ink colour by default 4.07 MAWDRAW et al: YASF (yet another spacing fix). Will it ever end? 4.08 MAWDRAW: 2nd*3rd dimension may now be 64KB instead of just 32kb Fixed too fast auto-repeat on scroll bar in MCALLT MWINDOW#ch,0 sets window size to whole outline MOBJA#ch\inwin! returns address of info window definition 4.09 MCALLT returns 0 in event% in case of a timeout 4.10 Fixed PTOP keyboard stuffing AppMan -=-=-= 4.00 Fixed handling of configured default directory 4.01 Fixed memory corruption Sprite preview can handle big sprites (automatic resize) Some changes for really big objects 4.02 New high colour menus courtesy of Wolfgang Uhlig System palette used by new menus configurable Background colour configurable New default background colour (matches EasyMenu) Various fixes for handling big objects (limit: 16MB per object) Now also allows exchanging of extension file after an appendix has been loaded Remembers last used directory EasySource -=-=-=-=-= 4.00 Now writes extended sprite definitions as a dc.w block instead of crashing Disassembles scaling information for "Initial pointer position" Some changes in the generated code fragments