TheDraw


TheDraw is a text editor for MS-DOS to create ANSI and animations as well as ASCII art. The editor is especially useful to create or modify files in ANSI format and text documents, which use the graphical characters of the IBM ASCII code pages, because they are not supported by Microsoft Windows anymore. The first version of the editor was developed in 1986 by Ian E. Davis of TheSoft Programming Services. The last public version of the editor was version 4.63, which was released in October 1993.
TheDraw was one of the first ANSI editors that supported ANSIs longer than 25 rows. The limit in the latest available version is still 100 rows. Other editors, such as ACiDDraw are able to support ANSIs larger than 100 lines for a single ANSI/ASCII. The animation mode is limited to 50 lines. The column width can be extended from the standard 80 characters to 160, but this also reduces the row limit down to 50.

Compatibility with Microsoft Windows

The program is stable in an MS-DOS Window on Windows XP and allows the user to maintain mouse control. Used with Windows Vista however, TheDraw performs with less predictable results. It works with DOSBox.

Significant features

Some of the features of the editor include: