Tips on viewing Ascii Animations

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              Tips on viewing .vt animations with MSDOS

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Requests often appear for help on viewing .vt animation 
files. I therefore decided to write the following notes which refer 
to viewing under MSDOS. I do not think the steps will be much 
different on other Operating Systems.  

Don't ask me how to fix up bad pictures - it usually involves a lot 
of tedious work with a text editor - with little reward or 
satisfaction. It simply is not worthwhile.

                                          -cfbd-  11 October 1996

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I use MSDOS to view .vt files. 

Most animations seem to be produced on Unix systems.

Unfortunately .vt files do give variable results.  

Some produce a lot of unwanted garbage on the screen. Others give 
unsatisfactory pictures with symbols mixed up with letters in the 
pictures.  

Anything that looks too messy I just throw away. I don't want to 
spend hours trying to fix whole files giving poor pictures.

Fairly minimal garbage I just edit out in a session with my word 
processor editor. Any WP or Text editor should do the job.  



Having said all that - the procedure I use is as follows:


PROCEDURE


1) Download the file from the newsgroup using normal methods.


2) Rename the .vt file  FILENAME.UUE ( not filename.vt which would give 
   trouble later ).                    ^^^


3) Use a UUDECODE program to decode FILENAME.UUE:

            C> UUDECODE FILENAME.UUE

  This automatically produces a new file, FILENAME.VT, which appears 
  in your directory.  


4) I then use a CRLF conversion program, such as FLIP.EXE, which 
   converts the line endings in the file from the Unix ending ( LF 
   linefeed only ) to the MSDOS line endings which end in CRLF ( 
   Carriage Return plus Linefeed ). 

        C> FLIP -mvb FILENAME.VT

   The -mvb switch in the command line ensures that FLIP.EXE will 
   convert the file although it "sees" the ESC Codes as a binary 
   format. Without the -b switch FLIP would refuse to convert the 
   file because it identifies it as a binary file.

   Omission of this step often, but not always, gives you a broken 
   up picture when you try to view the .vt file, due to the absence 
   of Carriage Returns in the Unix format.  


5) Check that you have the MSDOS program ANSI.SYS active on your 
   machine. 

   Ensure that your CONFIG.SYS file contains the line:

           device = ansi.sys


6) If all is well, all you need to do now to see the animation
   is use the MSDOS "type" command:

         C> type FILENAME.VT


  "cat"  -  the cat command is simply the Unix equivalent of the 
            MSDOS "type" command. 

  "list" -  Some other systems use "list" for this same command.  
            

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FLIP.EXE is available on the Simtel Archive and its main Mirror Site
oak.oakland.edu:

Directory pub/msdos/textutil/
 Filename   Type Length   Date    Description
==============================================
flip1exe.zip  B   14466  890731  Convert text files MSDOS<->UNIX format,
1of2
flip1src.zip  B   21577  890713  Convert text files MSDOS<->UNIX format,
2of2

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PS   Don't ask me how to make vt animations - I don't know !

     Tip: Get a simple animation and study it using your 
     wordprocessor and try to figure out how the author has done it.  
     Then try your hand at a very simple animation of your own.
     Post the results here.

Bye,