Atari XL - Page 141

Characters
131
the character in an array. The character is then
displayed on the screen by the routine at 2000.
The modification of the character is performed by
the section of program at 3000. You may move the
cursor around the character grid wi th the cursor
keys and use the space bar to set or clear the pixels
of the character. A menu of the options open to you
is displayed at the bottom of the screen. The ESC
key returns you to the main menu, while the
RETURN key moves the cursor to the top left
corner of the grid. To erase all the data for a
character, hold down SHIFT and press the CLEAR
key.
When you have finished designing the new
character, pressing P will store the new defini tion
in character memory. Lines 4000 to 4090 perform
this function.
Saving a character set onto tape is performed by
the subroutine at 12000. The character sets are
reloaded into the machine by the routine at 11000.
WARNING
Do not reset the XL by using the RESET key or the
new characters will be lost.
MULTICOLOUR CHARACTERS
There are two more graphics modes which display
characters, and wi th these the colour of the
individual pixels which make up a character can be .
specified. This means you can have up to four
different colours within each character.
The two multicolour character modes are modes 12
and 13, and are obtained in the usual way. A four
line mode 0 window is obtained but as with modes 1
and 2, adding 16 to the mode number in a