Hey all. Setting up a PETSCII version of my BBS, and had a question about fonts. For most of my art/menu screens (including welcome, login, main, message, etc.) I'm creating PETSCII art that uses the UPPERCASE C64 font. It displays as expected, but once loaded, the entire screen changes to what appears a LOWER CASE font, which instantly makes the PETSCII art garbled.

Reading through fonts.ini, seems like this is as designed, as synchronet sends the default font to the terminal and instantly changes what's on screen.

Is there any way to prevent this -- so that I can display the PETSCII menu as designed, and not have the font swapped (or do it in a way that only affects the prompt)?

Cheers, and thanks for any help.

aLPHA
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To: Alpha
Re: Synchronet C64 font questions
By: Alpha to All on Sat Feb 25 2023 02:55 pm

> Hey all. Setting up a PETSCII version of my BBS, and had a question about
> fonts. For most of my art/menu screens (including welcome, login, main,
> message, etc.) I'm creating PETSCII art that uses the UPPERCASE C64 font. It
> displays as expected, but once loaded, the entire screen changes to what
> appears a LOWER CASE font, which instantly makes the PETSCII art garbled.

Your art/menu screens need to include the appropriate character sequence to put the terminal into the PETSCII character set (not font) that it was designed for. Fonts have nothing to do with it.

> Reading through fonts.ini, seems like this is as designed, as synchronet
> sends the default font to the terminal and instantly changes what's on
> screen.

Sorry, but fonts.ini is not applicable to your situation.

> Is there any way to prevent this -- so that I can display the PETSCII menu
> as designed, and not have the font swapped (or do it in a way that only
> affects the prompt)?

By default, Synchronet enables the PETSCII upper/lower character set upon connection by a PETSCII terminal and after displaying any PETSCII (.seq) file. Your display/menu files are free to change to the PETSCII upper/graphics character by sending the character 142, as is the standard practice, but Synchronet will always change the character set back to upper/lower after the displaly file has been sent (so you may want to insert a pause/hit-a-key prompt at the end of your PETSCII-graphics files).

> Cheers, and thanks for any help.

No problem. Hopefully that helps.
--
digital man (rob)

Synchronet "Real Fact" #63:
"Baja" (name of Synchronet PCMS compiler/languege) is pronounced "ba-ha"
Norco, CA WX: 44.7°F, 99.0% humidity, 0 mph NE wind, 0.62 inches rain/24hrs
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To: Digital Man
> By default, Synchronet enables the PETSCII upper/lower character set upon
> connection by a PETSCII terminal and after displaying any PETSCII (.seq)
> file. Your display/menu files are free to change to the PETSCII
> upper/graphics character by sending the character 142, as is the standard
> practice, but Synchronet will always change the character set back to
> upper/lower after the displaly file has been sent (so you may want to insert
> a pause/hit-a-key prompt at the end of your PETSCII-graphics files).

OK, this makes sense! For general display of art, sending PAUSE will do the
trick. For menu art, sounds like I should avoid UPPER only characters, because
they will switch to upper/lower after display...
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
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To: Alpha
Re: Synchronet C64 font questions
By: Alpha to Digital Man on Sat Feb 25 2023 04:01 pm

> > By default, Synchronet enables the PETSCII upper/lower character set upon
> > connection by a PETSCII terminal and after displaying any PETSCII (.seq)
> > file. Your display/menu files are free to change to the PETSCII
> > upper/graphics character by sending the character 142, as is the standard
> > practice, but Synchronet will always change the character set back to
> > upper/lower after the displaly file has been sent (so you may want to
> > insert a pause/hit-a-key prompt at the end of your PETSCII-graphics
> > files).
>
> OK, this makes sense! For general display of art, sending PAUSE will do the
> trick. For menu art, sounds like I should avoid UPPER only characters,
> because they will switch to upper/lower after display...

Yeah. Too many things (e.g. prompts) utilize lowercase characters for the BBS to just leave the terminal in that charset mode. It's conceivable that the BBS could just convert all output chars to uppercase only and then you could have your menus use the graphic charset, but that's not how it works today and there's no option to do that. An all uppercase PETSCII BBS might be more "retro" or "period-accurate" however, so it's not a terrible idea.
--
digital man (rob)

Rush quote #8:
One likes to believe in the freedom of music...
Norco, CA WX: 41.2°F, 97.0% humidity, 2 mph NW wind, 0.58 inches rain/24hrs
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