Table of Contents

ANSI Editors

Editors that support files with ANSI X3.64 Terminal escape sequences and IBM CP437 (extended-ASCII) characters:

Name Platforms Ctrl-ABINSAUCEOpen Source
ACiDDrawDOS No YesYesNo
DuhDraw Linux No No YesYes
TheDraw DOS No YesNoNo
TheBrush, Thedraw companion ANSI art painter DOS No YesNoNo
Moebius Editor Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X No Yes ??? Yes
MysticDraw Windows, *nix No??????Yes
NewDraw *nix No YesNoYes
PabloDraw Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X Yes YesYesYes
R.A.G.E ANSI Editor DOS No YesNoNo
SyncDraw Windows, *nix, Mac OS-X YesYesYesYes
TundraDraw Windows, *nix, No NoNo Yes
VTXEdit *nix ?? ??Yes Yes

PabloDraw

PabloDraw is the recommended display file (e.g. screen/menu) editor for use with Synchronet BBS.

Ctrl-A Support

PabloDraw supports a subset of Synchronet's Ctrl-A color/attribute codes in the files it can open/edit:

You must manually choose "Ctrl-A" in the format selection box when opening ''.asc'' files

  1. PabloDraw assumes text files with a .msg suffix/extension may contain Synchronet Ctrl-A codes
    (so files with .msg extensions are a bit easier to open/edit than .asc files with PabloDraw)
  2. By default, PabloDraw does not support Ctrl-A codes when opening/saving files with a .asc suffix/extension
    (solution: the user must manually choose “Ctrl-A” for the file format/type when opening or saving .asc files with Ctrl-A codes)
  3. Many Ctrl-A codes (e.g. Ctrl-AL for clearing the screen) are not recognized by PabloDraw and will be stripped when editing a file
    (solution: use equivalent @-codes instead as @-codes are not interpreted or stripped by PabloDraw)

BIN Support

PabloDraw supports the viewing and modification of .bin files (e.g. like those used for Avatars collections) and has features that make it nice for editing .bin file (e.g. SAUCE record reading/writing, narrower widths). However, the current version of PabloDraw (3.2.1) has a bug where by the last line of a .bin file is removed/truncated when saving the file (solution: add an extra line of any character before saving .bin files).

TheDraw

TheDraw was one of the most widely used tools for ANSI file creation/editing for MS-DOS systems. Since it is a 16-bit DOS program with no source code available to the public (that we know of), it has to be run in an emulated or virtual x86/DOS environment which can be a challenge.

Block-Save

When saving display files (e.g. screens/menus) with TheDraw, in order to assure there are no unintended ANSI-animation sequences or extra blank lines at the end of the file, use the Block-Save (Alt-B) command to mark the area of the file (i.e. top-left to bottom-right) and save as “Ansi” with no delay and no animation. 

Save screen in what format? (ESC aborts)
Ansi asciI aVatar @-codes asM Pascal C obJect Binary bSave COM TheDraw Library

See Also