ReadMe for TAngband 2.8.3

What is it?
-----------
TAngband stands for Terminal Angband. Its claim to fame is
the support of multiple, different-sized, possibly overlapping
terminals in a single window. This allows text and 16x16 graphics
to be displayed in the same window.

The file "toplevel.prf" controls the number of windows, the
number of terminals in each window, and the layout of the display
in each terminal. It is possible to rearrange the various screen
elements (stats, hitpoints, Study message, etc), and even to have
multiple views of the cave in different windows.

Note that TAngband is mainly experimental, although the game it
is based on, Angband 2.8.3, is basically unchanged.

Bugs and Limitations
--------------------
- Windows are not dynamically resizeable. This would involve
  recomputing the geometry of each terminal, redisplaying the
  information in each terminal, and other complications.

- The font used by each terminal can only be specified in the
  toplevel.prf file, and cannot be changed on-the-fly.

- Graphics mode can only be specified in toplevel.prf, and cannot
  be changed on-the-fly.

- Each terminal has its own cursor, which causes the cursor to
  be displayed when (and where) it shouldn't.

- There is little error checking to make sure the display
  elements in a terminal are in bounds. So if toplevel.prf
  specifies an invalid location, it might cause the program
  to crash.

- The "toplevel" code needs to be rewritten into a generic
  front end and platform-specific back end, like z-term.c.

- Graphics assignments in graf-new.prf are probably not all
  correct.

- Documentation for the changes is almost non-existent,
  besides source-code comments.

- The character grid is not lighted properly without a light
  source.

- The Inventory and Spell lists, as well as monster recall,
  currently take up a screenful. It might be possible to have a
  small resizeable terminal to restore the original behaviour
  here.

- There are still some Term_fresh() calls that need to be
  changed to fresh_all() for character death in files.c.

Binary and Sources
------------------
The archive tang-283-win32.zip contains an MS Windows binary,
library, and source files. Sorry, no Makefile.

The current toplevel.prf layout means you will need at least a
800x600 monitor.

Final remarks
-------------
I don't spend much time working on Terminal Angband, but other
people are of course welcome to it.

-- Tim Baker
July 12, 1998