TextAway
========

...by Henry


The program is pretty self-explanatory; it
sends text scrolling away into the intersellar
distance, inspired by the start of the film
Star Wars.

The text can be found in the file 'Text'
within the !TextAway directory (hold down the
SHIFT key when double-clicking on !TextAway
to find it).  Use !Edit or some similar
application to alter the file for your own
uses.

A few handy hints on text files for scrolling:

* Keep the number of words on the screen at
  any one time low, and the shorter the words
  the better; this is because the poor program
  is having to do a lot of work to put the
  words in at various scales and angles, so it
  slows down when there is lots on-screen.

* Everything is automatically centred.  If you
  want things to come out on the left, add
  spaces on the end of lines; insert spaces at
  the beginning of lines to move words right.

* The program will terminate when the end of
  the message is reached; if you want it to
  repeat forever put a single '*' on the last
  line of the message.  Pressing ESCAPE is
  the only way to stop it running.

* If you find the scrolling slows occasionally
  it could be that the speed is set too fast.
  Edit the !RunImage BASIC program and set the
  'speed%' variable on line 120 to a higher
  value (lower is faster but you need a really
  quick machine or very little text to use
  lower values). Speed 2 is the default.

* To use !TextAway in conjunction with other
  programs, do the following:

    Set the TextAway$Dir variable to the
    directory containing your text and the
    FontData file.
    Call the !RunImage program.

    for example:

    set TextAway$Dir adfs::TextAway.$.!TextAway
    *!TextAway.!RunImage

    TextAway will return control to the calling
    program when the message finishes (unless,
    of course, the last line is a single '*').

* If you get a 'Bad Mode' error, switch to MODE
  15 and re-run !TextAway.


If you're a hacker you'll be able to do lots of
other useful things like changing the colour of
the text, making the stars move about, adding a
suitably atmospheric soundtrack, or whatever.
Me, I'm happy with it as it is.


Have fun!


               - Henry.