Demonstrates a simulated underline cursor routine for the TS2068, submitted to Syncware News as a competition entry by Richard Bredhoff in 1985. The effect prints each character of a string individually, flashing an underscore ahead of each letter using PRINT, CHR$ 8, BEEP, and two PAUSE 1 calls — producing a typewriter-style reveal that avoids text appearing all at once. A multi-paragraph demo string assembled by concatenation illustrates the technique across two screens, with a simple pager subroutine triggered at a calibrated character position to pause and clear between pages. The program is intended as a reusable snippet: the string variable name, BEEP parameters, and PAUSE durations are all designed to be modified for use in games or utilities.
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Source Code
1 REM Simulated Underlining Cursor Routine
2 REM RESET 1985 Richard Bredhoff 962 E 107 St Brooklyn, NY 11236
3 REM SYNCWARE NEWS 2068 Screen Utility Competition Entry
9 BORDER 1: PAPER 1: CLS : INK 6
10 LET g$="This is a demontration of the simulated 'underline' cursor routine."
11 LET g$=g$+CHR$ 13+"It can be used to print any instructions for games, or util-ities and effect of a screen full of printing appearing suddenly is avoided."
12 LET g$=g$+CHR$ 13+"The string to be printed can be of any length, have any legal 'name' and may include any of the control characters, simply by concatenating the new charac-ters to the existing string."
13 LET g$=g$+CHR$ 13+"Of course, the BEEP can be made longer or shorter or eliminated entirely, as can the two PAUSES in line 30. "
14 LET g$=g$+CHR$ 13+"If the text is longer than one screen, any additional screens may be displayed on demand, to allow for variations in reading speed and comprehension, as shown."
15 LET g$=g$+CHR$ 13+"The variabe 'pager' is initiallyset to 0, turned on when the first page is nearly full (PRINTLEN g$) and turned off by the subroutine."
19 LET pager=0
20 FOR t=1 TO LEN g$
22 IF t>520 AND t<522 THEN LET pager=1
24 IF pager=1 THEN GO SUB 1010
30 PRINT "_";: BEEP .001,20: PRINT CHR$ 8;" ";: PAUSE 1: PRINT CHR$ 8;g$(t);: PAUSE 1
40 NEXT t
45 PRINT AT 21,0;"Press any key to reread Page 1..": PAUSE 0: CLS : GO TO 20
50 STOP
1010 PRINT AT 21,0;"Press any key to continue...": PAUSE 0
1020 LET pager=0: CLS : RETURN
9990 STOP
9995 CLEAR : SAVE "A WINNER !" LINE 1Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.