title: "vbmClearSmallText" description: TRSE built-in method (from IDE help)

`vbmClearSmallText`

Systems: VIC20
Parameters: a, a, b, b, b

vbmClearSmallText( [address-text], [address-chars], [byte-x], [byte-y], [byte-lineheight]);

[address-text] - address of a CSTRING, the message to display
[address-chars] - address of the characterset to use for the font
[byte-x] - X column (0-39) to display the message
[byte-y] - Y line (0-183) to display the message
[byte-lineheight] - Line spacing when text wraps

Description

Draws a text message to the bitmap using the given small font. Text will wrap around when the end of a line is reached and move down by the number of pixels specified by the line height parameter. The character font will merge with the bitmap.

Small text is like its larger sibbling except two text letters are squeezed into one character cell on the screen. This allows twice as many small text characters on a line than regular text, but at the expense of the resolution of the text characters.

You must draw your small text character set in a specific way. The characters can be up to 8 pixels in height, as for normal text, but the width must not exceed four pixels. Furthermore, you must draw the same small 4x8 letter twice in the character. Eg: for the letter A, you would draw this twice in character 1 so that it looks like 'AA'. The small text routine simply masks out the left or right side depending upon where that character would appear on the screen. For variety, you could draw the characters slightly differently on the left and right side.

There are three ways to draw small text:

vbmDrawSmallTextO - draws the text message and merges it over the current pixels on the bitmap
vbmDrawSmallTextE - draws the text message and merges it using the EOR operation with the bitmap
vbmClearSmallText - clears, or 'cuts out' the text message from the pixels on the bitmap

Example


    font: incbin("font4x8.bin", $4000); // first 64 PETSCII Screen Codes

    ...

    message: cstring = ("HELLO WORLD ", "-", " IN CAPS");

    ...

    // clears text at column 2, line 10 (pixels) with a line height of 6 by 'cutting it out' of the bitmap
    vbmClearSmallText( message, font, 2, 10, 6 );

vbmClearSmallText