an ebook on the Acorn Electron

aerworuld · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:40 pm

hey all!

i'm just in the process of putting together an 'ebook' version of my first novel on the Electron; it will end up as a bootable disk that gives you a contents page that you can use to jump to any chapter and read it on screen on your Elk.. just like an eBook for pc, etc.

i was wondering if folks had encountered books available in this way on the Elk or BBC back in the day?

daveejhitchins · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:47 pm

Hmmm . . . Sounds interesting. What's the Genre?

Dave H

aerworuld · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:53 pm

daveejhitchins wrote:

Hmmm . . . Sounds interesting. What's the Genre?

Dave H

Its fantasy fiction! Book I and II in the series are available in paperback and conventional eBook, and we've just started work on an audio book version of Book I

Plug plug further details at http://www.realm-of-lorroth.com plug plug plug

daveejhitchins · **Posted:** Wed Oct 10, 2012 8:12 am

aerworuld wrote:

Its fantasy fiction! Book I and II in the series are available in paperback and conventional eBook, and we've just started work on an audio book version of Book I

Plug plug further details at http://www.realm-of-lorroth.com plug plug plug

Stuart, I'm not usually 'into' Fantasy (science fiction for me

), however, I'll give it a go, always after a good read

Dave H

aerworuld · **Posted:** Wed Oct 10, 2012 3:24 pm

Might take me a while to get the Elk version together Dave; I've got a few formatting issues but everything else is going in nicely!

aerworuld · **Posted:** Fri Oct 12, 2012 5:47 pm

Folks, can I pick your brains?

I'm writing my ebook in BASIC and it is basic

but I'm happy with the results so far. When you delve into a chapter a screenful of text comes up at a time and you press a key when you ready to move on, fine.

Only thing is I can't find a way to get the text to word wrap effectively; short of manually altering each PRINT to stop a word getting split across two lines, what can I do?

Any ideas friends? [-o<

Stuart

Rich Talbot-Watkins · **Posted:** Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:28 pm

Best I can come up with in 10 mins is this. Just call PROCprint("your string...") instead of PRINT"your string", and it will automatically word-wrap (assuming a 40 column screen):

Code:

DEF PROCprint(A$)
LOCAL N%,M%
FOR N%=1 TO LEN A$
M%=INSTR(A$," ",N%)
IF M%=0 M%=LEN A$+1
IF POS+M%-N%>40 PRINT
PRINT MID$(A$,N%,M%-N%);
IF POS>0 VDU 32
N%=M%
NEXT
ENDPROC

It's not really very elegant code, but frankly I've forgotten how to program in BASIC after all these years. Hope that helps!

aerworuld · **Posted:** Fri Oct 12, 2012 8:17 pm

It works superbly! Rich, you are my new hero for today!!

aerworuld · **Posted:** Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:21 pm

Thank you Jon! You have completely lost me but it sounds good!! I'll give that a go over the weekend

davidb · **Joined:** Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:11 pm **Posts:** 562

aerworuld wrote:

i was wondering if folks had encountered books available in this way on the Elk or BBC back in the day?

It's not quite the same thing, but I thought that there was at least one Fighting Fantasy adaptation. Wasn't it Starship Traveller?

jonb · **Posted:** Sat Oct 13, 2012 9:39 am

aerworuld wrote:

Thank you Jon! You have completely lost me but it sounds good!! I'll give that a go over the weekend

Sorry, I saw a flaw and zapped the post. I am going to have a proper go at it on my Electron today and will post the result later on.

Stick with Rich's code for now, and when I am finished you can compare and choose.

Great fun!

aerworuld · **Posted:** Sat Oct 13, 2012 10:07 am

David, now that you mention the Fighting Fantasy conversions I think I remember.. 8 bit was well ahead of the new batch of iphone,etc, reworks of FF!!

That's ok Jon; I guessed it was something like that!

It is a truly wonderful way to spend some time

tautology · **Joined:** Wed Sep 01, 2010 3:26 pm **Posts:** 320

If you need stuff like italics, bold text or underline I have a couple of BASIC procedures that do stuff like that, from an old WYSIWYG text processor I wrote BitD.

aerworuld · **Posted:** Sat Oct 13, 2012 11:44 am

tautology wrote:

If you need stuff like italics, bold text or underline I have a couple of BASIC procedures that do stuff like that, from an old WYSIWYG text processor I wrote BitD.

That would be most appreciated!!

I was playing about with VDU chars making some Old English letters yesterday..

tautology · **Joined:** Wed Sep 01, 2010 3:26 pm **Posts:** 320

My routines for italic and underline:

Code:

 1360DEFPROCun(und$)
 1370FOR j=1 TO LENund$:?&70=ASCMID$(und$,j,1):A%=10:X%=&70:Y%=0:CALL&FFF1
 1380VDU23,255,?&71,?&72,?&73,?&74,?&75,?&76,?&77,?&78 EOR &FF:PRINT;CHR$255;:NEXT:ENDPROC
 1390:
 1400DEFPROCit(it$)
 1410FOR j=1 TO LENit$:?&70=ASCMID$(it$,j,1):A%=10:X%=&70:Y%=0:CALL&FFF1  
 1420VDU23,255,?&71 DIV2,?&72 DIV2,?&73 DIV2,?&74,?&75,?&76*2,?&77*2,?&78*2:PRINT;CHR$255;:NEXT:ENDPROC

They basically work by calling OSWORD 10 to read the character definition, then redefining character 255 to use the altered version.

Underline is done by EORing the last row with 255. Italic is don by shifting the top 3 rows left and the bottom 3 rows right. I did remember writing a bold version but I can't see it. The routines were designed for mode 3, to maximise memory but still give the 80 column wysiwyg view.

The word wrap and justify procedures:

Code:

  820DEFPROCwordwrp
  830a$=t$(y)
  840IF RIGHT$(a$,1)=" " a$=LEFT$(a$,LENa$-1):GOTO840
  850J=75:REPEAT:J=J-1:UNTIL MID$(a$,J,1)=" "
  860b$=MID$(a$,J+1):a$=LEFT$(a$,J-1)
  870t$(y)=a$+STRING$(75-LENa$," "):t$(y+1)=b$+" "+t$(y+1)
  880PRINTTAB(5,y-page);STRING$(75," ")TAB(5,y-page);t$(y);
  890IF X=0 X=LENb$
  900PRINT TAB(0,0)X,b$
  910y=y+1:IF LENt$(y)>75:PROCwordwrp
  920PRINTTAB(5,y-page);STRING$(75," ");TAB(5,y-page)t$(y);:IF x=0 x=1
  930y=Y+1:x=X:ENDPROC
 1210DEFFNj(width):PROCstrip:ne=1:q=2:ls=LENt$(y):REPEATls=ls-1:UNTIL MID$(t$(y),ls,1)=" " OR ls=1
 1220REPEATIFLENt$(y)>width GOTO1240 ELSEC%=INSTR(t$(y)," ",ne)
 1230t$(y)=LEFT$(t$(y),C%-1)+" "+MID$(t$(y),C%):ne=C%+1:REPEATne=ne+1:UNTILMID$(t$(y),ne,1)<>" ":IF ne>ls:ne=1
 1240UNTILLENt$(y)>width:=t$(y)

The justify function was always a bit buggy, which I never sorted.

It's been a long time since I've done any messing with Olde Englisc, but you should be able to get away with just upper and lower case thorns, eths and maybe a wynn if you're doing it from that time period.

aerworuld · **Posted:** Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:43 pm

many thanks for the code; i'll have a play with that this weekend!

Dreamland Fantasy · **Posted:** Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:53 pm

Another text wrapping routine that I done a few years ago.

Code:

  10 MODE 0
  20 A$="This is a text wrapping example. Here you can see the text being dynamically wrapped to a user defined width. Pretty neat stuff isn't it?"
  30 REPEAT
  40 INPUT'"Enter text width: " W%
  50 IF W% THEN PRINT'STRING$(W%,"-"):PROCwrap(A$):PRINT
  60 UNTIL W%=0
  70 END
  80 
  90 DEF PROCwrap(A$)
 100 L%=W%:O%=1
 110 REPEAT
 120 P%=INSTR(A$," ",O%)
 130 IF P%=0 THEN P%=LEN(A$)
 140 S%=P%-O%
 150 IF S%>=L% AND POS>1 THEN PRINT 
 160 IF S%>=L% THEN L%=W%-S%-1 ELSE L%=L%-S%-1
 170 PRINT MID$(A$,O%,S%+1);
 180 IF POS=1 THEN PRINT CHR$(127);
 190 O%=P%+1
 200 UNTIL P%=LEN(A$)
 210 ENDPROC

Kind regards,

Francis

aerworuld · **Posted:** Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:11 pm

Thank you Francis

I'm making slow progress - into chapter 3 now

I've had more keyboard failures in these few weeks than I had in the years of continuous use prior to storage of the elk!!

Its all good fun!

davidb · **Joined:** Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:11 pm **Posts:** 562

davidb wrote:

It's not quite the same thing, but I thought that there was at least one Fighting Fantasy adaptation. Wasn't it Starship Traveller?

I was mistaken. Thanks to the h2g2 page on Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and the Fighting Fantasy Wiki, we learn that I was probably thinking of Rebel Planet.

aerworuld · **Posted:** Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:36 am

hey friends, i haven't dropped this project - it's just taken a bit of a back-seat while i play with my new beeb

This morning i had a cunning plan; i tried saving the files from the Elk in .wav format so that i could work on them in an emulator on my PC (once they were .euf) but i didn't have much success. All this while I have had no problems loading wavs from media player on the PC into the beeb/elk via the cassette lead and saving them into Voice Recorder the same way, but voice recorder only saves up to 60 seconds worth! I have Audacity which is a wonderful piece of kit but no matter how much i tweak the levels i cannot get the beeb or the elk to load the saved wavs from it! Voice Recorder, for all its lack of bells and whistles, does the job first time every time :/

I suppose it's for the best as my plan was to cut and paste the text of the book from my original files on the PC to save all the typing into the elk, but this is cheating right? :shock:

I'll do it the old-fashioned way, might just take me a while

Mind you, I will find a way to figure it in the end as I understand the elk ADFS disk format might not be the most accessible for folks who would like to read the eBook!

Stuart

aerworuld · **Posted:** Tue Nov 26, 2013 11:07 am

I'm almost half way through typing to book into the Electron so I've floated the idea of the eBook as a freeware Electron ssd download over at Retro Software to see if there is any interest. Will probably carry discussions on it over on that thread.

cheers,
Stuart

sydney · **Posted:** Tue Nov 26, 2013 12:29 pm

Hi mate. If you want a quick way of getting text files onto ssd try this:

1. Open beebem.
2. File->Disc Options->New Disc 0
3. Make sure the disk is not write protected.
4. Edit->Import Files to Disc->Disc 0
5. Select the text file you want transfer on your pc.
6. Done!

You can check the file(s) are there with view:
1. *word
2. load "filename"
3. press escape

Hope this helps.

aerworuld · **Posted:** Tue Nov 26, 2013 12:57 pm

Hey Simon, that's a handy tip, thank you! I'm writing the ebook as a Basic programme on the elk though, to allow for jumping between chapters and pages, etc, so I'm not sure if id be able to get that text into the right format from View.

to be honest, I'm enjoying going back through the book this way; it takes me back to when i was first writing it!

MartinB · **Posted:** Tue Nov 26, 2013 11:40 pm

Since you have UPURS on your Elk, why can't you just export your discs straight to an ssd or dsd on the PC? If you're not doing this because you're using ADFS [me spits], surely there must be a way of porting the files to DFS [me nods approvingly] - does ADFS not support that? *

(* Someone ADFS savvy would need to comment...)

aerworuld · **Posted:** Wed Nov 27, 2013 7:40 am

MartinB wrote:

Since you have UPURS on your Elk, why can't you just export your discs straight to an ssd or dsd on the PC? If you're not doing this because you're using ADFS [me spits], surely there must be a way of porting the files to DFS [me nods approvingly] - does ADFS not support that? *

(* Someone ADFS savvy would need to comment...)

hehe dont panic Martin; they are in DFS! That earlier post about wavs and eufs was put up before i had UPURS

i started off in adfs but since then i have upgraded to AP34

i think I've just decided to do it all on my real elk for an authentic experience

jgharston · **Posted:** Wed Nov 27, 2013 7:52 pm

aerworuld wrote:

I was playing about with VDU chars making some Old English letters yesterday..

How's ROMFont.Gothic strike you?

aerworuld · **Posted:** Wed Nov 27, 2013 8:27 pm

jgharston wrote:

aerworuld wrote:

I was playing about with VDU chars making some Old English letters yesterday..

How's ROMFont.Gothic strike you?

very well indeed!

richardtoohey · **Posted:** Wed Nov 27, 2013 8:38 pm

But maybe just for section titles or something?

I think after a while one's eyeballs would bleed if everything in that font? :shock:

But I could very well be wrong. :-#

aerworuld · **Posted:** Wed Nov 27, 2013 8:46 pm

richardtoohey wrote:

But maybe just for section titles or something?

I think after a while one's eyeballs would bleed if everything in that font? :shock:

But I could very well be wrong. :-#

hehe dont panic; its all in good old plain Electron text

richardtoohey · **Posted:** Wed Nov 27, 2013 9:16 pm

Is that as good as BBC B text? :twisted:

an ebook on the Acorn Electron

Who is online