A generalized screen management utility: automatic programming approach

Abstract

Section 1: Introduction Application software for use in the low-cost microcomputer environment generally needs to require minimal training to use and a maximal degree of user-friendliness. Reasons for this vary, but generally revolve around: a) low budget for computing needs; b) single operator with high turnover rate, entailing frequent need for training. In this environment, the user's view of the system is largely confined to keyboard and video display screen, the keyboard providing the physical means of interacting with the system and the screen the visual. For off-the-shelf hardware, an application program can do very l i t t l e to make the keyboard more user-friendly, but can do a great deal with the screen. In this case, the hardware is general ly equipped with a screen for which the display is refreshed from a user-accessible memory area. This kind of hardware arrangement is called a memory mapped screen display. I fhen the screen memory is changed, the display changes. Since the screen memory is user-accessible, an application program can determine what is on the screen by examining the screen memory. Consequently, attractive and user-friendly screen interaction can be conducted via an application program working directly against the screen memory. The screen memory organization and programmer tools for