Loading a Life plane
File management operators have been added to REC , through which the CAM/PC 's lookup tables and/or bitplanes can be loaded. It is first necessary to define the file name, which should be stated as a string constant: for example, "LIFE.PLA ". The final space, terminating the string, is essential; any directory path acceptable to MS/DOS is also acceptable.
Once a file has been specified, the definition remains valid until another string constant appears in the program; this feature should be used cautiously. One of the following four operators may then be used:
- x - load the lookup table from the disk
- X - save the lookup table on the disk
- y - yp loads hexadecimal bitplane combination p from the disk
- Y - Yp saves bitplane p on the disk
These mnemonics have been chosen for compatibility with the menus, wherein y's refer to bitplanes and x's to rules. The same conventions regarding p also hold: for y, p can specify multiple planes (or none) by running through the range 0, ..., f. Only single planes can be stored, so the range is 0, 1, 2, 3 in Yp.
With respect to REC , no file naming convention exists. However, some menus contain the function keys F1 and F2 which employ the CAM/PC conventions of TAB amd PAT as extensions for tables and planes. The files are interchangeable, with the exception that CAMEX has files of one single size ( 4K for TAB and 8K for PAT) whereas CAM/PC has a greater variability. To load four distinct bitplanes in CAMEX , four files are necessary.
Harold V. McIntosh
E-mail:mcintosh@servidor.unam.mx