The ETC/CUI support library for implementing interactive CAL systems

Beware! This page is under construction.

• The UCI Ports System Reference Guide
  • in HTML, currently at CUI, University of Geneva.
  • for printing out with the itroff phototypesetting system.
    (More about itroff).
  • in plain text, with troff commands removed.
  • Using troff commands modified for psroff (needed for using PostScript printers), which requires "Courier", rather than "print-out", fonts.

  Host-Specific Screen and Timing Support

  PCVideo is a low-level unit intended for providing portable display device support to Ports, rather than for the direct use of the coder. Specific knowledge of any display device is contained within it, and hidden from Ports. When moving the library, particularly Ports, to a new environment, PCVideo needs to be moved first.

  NOTE: the word "Video" was used in this name, before multimedia made live video on PC screens possible, to include both the display possibilities at the time: text and (rather simple) graphics. So this unit does not support any multimedia capabilities; however, a unit VideoDiscMgr has been created in the DOS environment, which provides fundamental support for videodisc (not yet CD-ROM) usage in a couple of specific hardware environments. It is intended for use in conjunction with a version of the Turbo Pascal Ports unit extended specifically for multmedia dialogues. There is no p-System version available. VideoDiscMgr and the extended version of Ports should be considered, at this date, "unofficial but available within the Centre".

• The UCI Keyed File System Reference Guide
  This covers the kfAccess version of the unit, supplying the Keyed File I/O routines themselves;
  and the PDisplay extension of the unit, with support for "display", "data", and "layout" types of Keyed File messages.
  • in HTML, currently at CUI, University of Geneva.
  • for printing out with the itroff phototypesetting system.
    (More about itroff).
  • in plain text, with troff commands removed.

• The UCI String Analysis system Reference Guide
  • for printing out with the itroff phototypesetting system.
    (More about itroff).
  • in plain text, with troff commands removed.
  • a PostScript rendition
  • Using troff commands modified for psroff (needed for using PostScript printers), which requires "Courier" fonts, rather than the so-called "print-out" fonts used for the Imagen printers.
  • (CUI at the University of Geneva use a higher-level string-input matching system called AnswerIs.)

• the FastImage unit, for displaying pre-existing 2-tone bitmap images to the PC screen.

  Though FastImage is included here because of its use in existing dialogue modules at the Center, current development should prefer the BitManipulation system by Bertrand Ibrahim . DOS versions of the Center's Scientific Reasoning series dialogues are already using it.

• Other Pascal units that been added to the library:
  

  MenuDisplay

  Provides a simple, consistent, menu selection; mostly used in packaging the dialogues, to provide students a straightforward means of choosing sections within a dialogue. But it can also be used as part of activities.

  SignPosts

  A unit for placing "signposts" throughout dialogue code, to help log tracking information about student progress through dialogue activities.

  Miscellanea

  A unit supplying a few functions, such as random number generation, which are useful to have (especially in a debugged implementation) but don't necessarily fit under other headings.

  Parser

  A unit supplying runtime parser for arithmetic expressions passed to it as strings. Can handle a variety of function names, single-letter variables, and certain cases of implied multiplication.