TTET3

Syntax

TTET3 ( [#ch,] [timeout%,] trapno%, bufadr)

Location

QView Tiny Toolkit

This is a really extraordinary function because it allows you to call the TRAP #3 operating system calls which handle screen devices, so you would not theoretically need many other commands other than this one to manipulate windows, if the use of TTET3 were not complicated by the nature of its design.

The function TTET3 should only be used by experienced users (except for some fool-proof usages shown in the examples), so do not worry if you do not understand the following… although we have tried to keep it simple.

Let’s first turn to the syntax:

  • The channel #ch (default #1) must refer to a window (con_ or scr_).

  • The timeout for the machine code call trap is optional, the default is -1 (that means the operating system will try indefinitely to execute the trap) which is fine for most purposes.

  • Trapno% is a small positive integer that identifies the trap.

  • Bufadr must point to a piece of memory at least 16 bytes long.

Since this toolkit provides its own buffer starting at TTV, it is recommended and safe to use this for bufadr.

The required 16 bytes buffer is used to communicate with the processor, the registers D1, D2, A1 and A2 occupy four bytes (one longword) each within the buffer - they are copied to the processor when the trap is executed and after the trap has finished will hold any return values and be copied back into the buffer so that they may be read with the lines:

D1=PEEK_L(bufadr)
D2=PEEK_L(bufadr+4)
A1=PEEK_L(bufadr+8)
A2=PEEK_L(bufadr+12)

Example 1

Superfluous with CLS but:

x=TTET3(#2,32,TTV)

does a:

CLS#2.

Example 2

The procedure SD_ENQUIRE reads the window size and cursor position, the values are placed in the passed integer variables. You can test if anything went wrong (eg. #ch does not refer to a window) by checking if any of the values returned are negative.

The parameter what% determines the units,

  • what% = 0 will have the effect that wsx% and wsy% are the window width and height in pixels and that (cpx%, cpy%) is the position of the text cursor in screen pixels;

  • what%<>0 will give the same information but in characters.

100 FOR i = 0, 1
110   SD_ENQUIRE #2, i, a%, b%, c%, d%
120   PRINT a%, b%, c%, d%
130 END FOR i
140 :
150 DEFine PROCedure SD_ENQUIRE (ch, what%, wsx%, wsy%, cpx%, cpy%)
160   LOCal trapno%
170   POKE_L TTV+8, TTV+16
180   trapno% = 10 + NOT(NOT what%)
190   IF TTET3(#ch, 100, trapno%, TTV) THEN
200     wsx% = -1: wsy% = -1: cpx% = -1: cpy% = -1
210     RETurn
220   END IF
230   wsx% = PEEK_W(TTV+16): wsy% = PEEK_W(TTV+18)
240   cpx% = PEEK_W(TTV+20): cpy% = PEEK_W(TTV+22)
250 END DEFine SD_ENQUIRE

On Minerva, you can write NOT (NOT what%) without brackets. SD_ENQUIRE is absolutely clean, there is no danger at all that the system might crash, that it does not run on all QDOS machines or anything like that.

All other machine code traps available through TTET3 are covered by commands in this manual, but TTET3 can be used to avoid the need to link in a Toolkit.

CROSS-REFERENCE

Please refer to system documentation for details on each trap! See also IO_TRAP, QTRAP and MTRAP.