Light Pen Spelling By C.J.Richardson.
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The information contained within the light pen spelling program is a little
concise due to memory limitations. Here is a more detailed explanation of the
workings of the program.
The program was written so that a young person using a light pen could
practise spelling. A word is displayed in the center of the screen. The pen is
pointed at the bottom half of the screen where an alphabet is displayed. If
the pen is pointed at the correct letter, that letter is then placed on the
screen just below the word being displayed. This process is repeated until the
word has been duplicated. The duplicated word is then placed at the top of the
screen and the next word in the list is displayed in the center of the screen.
This process continues until all of the words in the list have been
reproduced. The line of words at the top of the screen where the word is put
when completed, scrolls to the left. New words are added to the end of the
line and the first word disappears off the edge of the screen. When all the
words in the list have been correctly duplicated, the program will start again
at the first word in that list. This will continue until ESCAPE is pressed,
the program then returns to the main menu.
You do not need a light pen to use the program. Input is accepted from the
keyboard.
The program is of interest to all ages as it can be used in other ways that
will be described later.
The simplest way to use the program is to run it and select option 2. This
option uses words stored within the program itself. There are 30 lists each
containing 49 words. The program asks for the number of the list that you wish
to use and the spelling game then starts.
Option 3 asks for a file name of a list of words stored on disc. There are a
number of lists supplied with this program. They are called Word1, Word2 etc.
Enter the name and the spelling game then starts.
Option 4 takes you to another menu, the maintenance menu.
Option 1 of the maintenance menu allows you to create a new word list to store
on disc. You may enter up to 49 words. Do not enter anything other than the
letters A to Z in upper or lower case. Nothing else is accepted. The only
other character accepted is a single '*' character. Enter this if you wish to
stop entering words into the list. The 50th word can never be altered. It is
always a '*' character entered just before the data is saved to disc.
Option 2 of the maintenance menu allows you to load a word list in to memory
from disc. Enter the file name of the list to be loaded and the list will be
loaded. If there are any errors occuring during loading, you will be returned
to the main menu.
Option 3 of the maintenance menu allows you to load a word list in to memory
from the DATA held within the program. Enter a number between 1 and 30 for the
corresponding list.
Option 4 of the maintenance menu displays the whole of the word list held in
memory. The very last entry in the list is always the '*' character denoting
the end of the list. If you have changed the number of words option
(see later), it is possible that a '*' character may appear before the end of
the list. The program sees the first occurrence of the '*' character as the
end of the list, you can overwrite any '*' characters appearing like this by
using the 'Alter Word' option (see option 5).
Option 5 of the maintenance menu allows you to alter a single word in the list
in memory. Enter the number of the word (shown when you choose option 4 of the
maintenance menu). Enter the new/altered word. It is possible to overwrite
terminating '*' characters appearing before the end of lists.
Option 6 of the maintenance menu allows you to save the list of words in
memory to disc. You MUST use this option before choosing to play the spelling
game or leaving the program or your word list will be lost. Simply enter the
file name that you wish to save the word list by.
Option 7 of the maintenance menu returns you to the main menu (as will
pressing ESCAPE).
Option 5 of the main menu takes you to the options menu:
Option 1 of the options menu allows you to switch on the timing. After a word
list has been completed, the time taken to complete the list is displayed in
minutes and seconds. Simply press the number 1 to toggle between timer on and
timer off. The current state is displayed in yellow.
Option 2 of the options menu selects how long the prompt appears for. The word
prompt in the center of the screen that must be reproduced will stay there
until reproduced if this is set to 0. Any other number entered is taken to be
the number of seconds that the prompt stays on the screen until it disappears.
If the prompt is set to disappear, the light pen/keyboard will not accept
input until the word has disappeared.
Option 3 of the options menu toggles whether the prompt is scrambled or not.
The current status is displayed in yellow. This can be quite an entertaining
option, especially if the game is timed and the word is set to disappear after
a short period of time.
Option 4 of the options menu when pressed only appears to refresh the screen,
however, it also causes all output and input in the game to be in UPPER CASE
no matter what case the word list is in.
Option 5 of the options menu when pressed only appears to refresh the screen,
however, it also causes all output and input in the game to be in LOWER CASE
no matter what case the word list is in.
Option 6 of the options menu allows you to enter an offset for the lightpen.
Some lightpens of different construction and maybe lead length may have timing
problems, the pen has to be pointed to the wrong part of the screen for it to
work. Experiment with different settings. -1, 0 and 1 are suggested in the
program. 0 is no offset.
Option 7 of the options menu allows you to change the number of words used.
Enter a number between 1 and 49. EVERYTHING in the program is affected by this
setting. Be careful! Because if you load in a word list from disc and change
this setting to fewer words than are in that list and then re-save the list to
disc by the same name, you will have lost the words that were in the list
after the new setting. Longer lists loaded in from DATA and disc will be
truncated to this number of words. New lists created will have this number of
words. A '*' character will be placed in the list to indicate the new end of
the list. If the setting is subsequently changed to a greater number of words,
the original '*' character is not removed and you will have to overwrite it
with another word using the 'Alter Word' option of the maintenance menu.
Option 8 of the options menu returns you to the main menu.
Option 6 of the main menu returns you to BASIC.