Well guys, I've been out in Colorado for a little over a week at a family reunion... needless to say, the thin(ner) air helped me come up with some crazy ideas.

Right now, I'm putting the finishing touches on a suite of programs that allow you to create, edit, and use various fonts (other than the 3 built-in ones) on the TI-89.

It supports fonts of any size from 2x2 to 8x8 (including any combination in between, such as 3x7 or 6x5). Each font is stored in a single large (about 2KB) file, of a proprietary format I've created.

And, to top it all off... it's in BASIC.

It's not on TICalc yet, but I hope to upload it within three or four days.

Eventually, hopefully within a week or two, I will have written a Visual BASIC program for Windows that allows you to create and edit TI-89 font files in a MUCH faster and more user-friendly environment.

It's good to be back.

w00t.

It's all in BASIC? Wow, how did you accomplish that? I assume there's plenty of exec( strings.

Well... I guess I should clarify. It's not ENTIRELY in BASIC. It uses FLIB, that wonderful little C function library by François Leiber. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to do it! Many thanks, François!

Oh, I think I get it now... I think.

BTW, if someone could help me to learn how you read and write from/to files in TI-89 C, it would be much appreciated, since I could write a MUCH faster version of my font editor in C with that knowledge...

w00t, indeed.

Um... just look around in the help area. I was tyring to do that do, but gave up, since I can't even do it in regular C (for the computer, I mean). But, I did successfully make a program with a title screen with grayscale in it. I just don't understand how to use rowread() and graystuff 'cuz Auto-Interrupt 1 messes everything up. Okay, I should shut up now.

If you're interested in programming C for 68K calcs, you can download the TI-SDK at education.ti.com or the far-superior TIGCC from tigcc.ticalc.org.

I think your problem with rowread() could easily be fixed if you'ld use the newer functions. rowread() was replaced by OSdequeue(), ngetchx(), and kbhit(). If you need some lesson in TIGCC, i'ld be glad to help, I was in the same position when I started learning TIGCC.

Well, I've found that OSdequeue(), kbhit(), ngetchx(), and all of those don't support "real-time" button pressing, like rowread can tell you if a button is on or off, including the 2nd, alpha, diamond, and shift keys, that the others won't allow. Plus, it's about 300 times faster. ngetchx() just doesn't do it. :(
OBTW, I am making Block Dude for the TI-89 (I assume it's not already been done, and if so, then oh well). Because I know it's on the z80 machines. Anyway, I'm using ngetchx() in that one, because there's really no need for quick action or anything.

--DOWNLOAD JSC 1.6!--

OSdequeue() does do real-time if you know how to use it right, check out the FAQ in the documentation.

How do I send and run programs on my 89 VTI?

You can right click on the calculator a select something like "Send to VTI" or you can drag&drop files from the window explorer.