MicroApp
Text Mode Application Framework for MS-DOS

 

📑 Table of Contents

• ✨ Features
• 🧩 Component Library
• 🚀 Quickstart
• 🔨 Build MicroEdit
• 📂 Repository Structure
• 🔗 Dependencies
• ⚙ Technical Details
• 📄 License

✨ Features

MicroApp is a C++ text-mode application framework for MS-DOS inspired by the Turbo C++ style test user interface. MicroApp is built on top of the MicroText library. MicroApp offers an application engine that supports a menu bar, dialog panels with drop shadows, focus and layer management, and a double buffred component tree for smooth animation.

• A single Component base class with a parent/child tree, focus handling, and event dispatch. Every component derives from it.
• Modal dialogs that draw with a drop shadow and restore the exact background they covered on close.
• A full menu system with MenuBar, Menu, and MenuItem, including keyboard shortcut labels and drop-down navigation.
• Built in file dialogs with DOS findfirst / findnext directory enumeration.
• Application TitleBar, StatusBar, and ApplicationPanel.
• An Application class that owns the main loop, the screen buffer, and the double buffering. Consumers of the class subclass it and register components.
• Flicker-free rendering inherited from MicroText double buffering. The whole component tree composites off-screen, then blits to 0xB800 in one REP MOVSW.

🧩 Component Library

Group	Classes
Core	Component, Panel, Application, ApplicationPanel
Basic controls	Label, Button, TextBox, CheckBox
Selection	RadioButton, RadioButtonGroup, Group
Lists	ListItem, ListBox, DropDownTextBox
Menus	MenuBar, Menu, MenuItem
Utility	TitleBar, StatusBar
Dialogs	Dialog, MessageBox, ConfirmationBox
File dialogs	FileDialog, NewFileDialog, FileOpenDialog, FileSaveAsDialog

🚀 Quickstart

MicroApp ships as two source pairs — the framework itself (src/M-APP/) and its vendored MicroText dependency (src/M-TEXT/). Add all four files to your project, include both headers, and compile the three modules together. There is nothing to install.

#include "mtext.h"
#include "mapp.h"

Compile with the Borland C++ 3.1 command-line driver, large memory model:

bcc -c -ml -2 -I..\src\M-TEXT ..\src\M-TEXT\mtext.c
bcc -c -ml -I..\src\M-TEXT -I..\src\M-APP ..\src\M-APP\mapp.cpp
bcc -c -ml -I..\src\M-TEXT -I..\src\M-APP myapp.cpp
bcc -ml -emyapp.exe mtext.obj mapp.obj myapp.obj

The large memory model (-ml) is required throughout — MicroText's TEXTBUFFER cells are far pointers and off-screen buffers come from farmalloc. MicroText is compiled with -2 (80286); MicroApp itself has no CPU-specific requirement beyond what MicroText imposes.

For a complete worked example, read test/test.cpp — MicroEdit is a real, working editor in a single file.

🔨 Build MicroEdit

The test/ directory holds MicroEdit, a minimal text editor that serves as both the framework's validation harness and its reference application. It exercises the whole component library: File New/Open/Save/Save As through the file dialogs, a Settings dialog built from a ListBox and a DropDownTextBox, an About MessageBox, an exit ConfirmationBox, and real file input/output on small plain-text files.

Requires MS-DOS, or a DOS emulator like DOSBox, with the Borland C++ 3.1 command-line driver (bcc) on the PATH. Run from the test/ directory inside an already-configured DOSBox session:

cd test
BUILD.BAT
TEST.EXE

The .obj files, TEST.EXE, and BUILD.LOG all land in test/. Run BUILD.BAT clean to remove them.

📂 Repository Structure

Micro App
├─ src               Framework source
│  ├─ M-APP          MicroApp - C++ TUI component framework
│  │  ├─ mapp.cpp    Implementation
│  │  └─ mapp.h      Public API
│  │
│  └─ M-TEXT         MicroText - vendored dependency
│     ├─ mtext.c     Implementation (C + inline x86 asm)
│     └─ mtext.h     Public API
│
├─ test              MicroEdit - the reference application
│  ├─ build.bat      Builds TEST.EXE (build clean to remove artifacts)
│  └─ test.cpp       MicroEdit source
│
├─ README.md
└─ LICENSE

🔗 Dependencies

MicroApp depends on MicroText, a low-level text-mode library written in C and inline x86 assembly.

A copy of MicroText is vendored into this repository under src/M-TEXT/, so the framework builds standalone with no external checkout. The canonical MicroText source lives in its own repository; the copy here tracks it and is refreshed when MicroText changes.

  ┌──────────────────────────┐
  │         MicroApp         │
  └────────────┬─────────────┘
               │
               ▼
  ┌──────────────────────────┐
  │        MicroText         │
  └──────────────────────────┘

⚙ Technical Details

• Target OS: MS-DOS 3.30, or above.
• Target CPU: 80286 / 80386 / 80486, real mode (MicroText compiles with -2; a plain 8086 is not supported).
• Memory model: Large (-ml), far code + far data, with farmalloc-ed off-screen buffers.
• Display: Direct 0xB800 hardware text mode (80×25, or 43/50 rows), one word per cell (character + attribute).
• Double buffering: The component tree composites into an off-screen TEXTBUFFER, then a single FlipScreenBuffer (REP MOVSW) blits it to 0xB800, flicker-free.
• Dialog rendering: Modal dialogs snapshot the region they cover with GetTextBlock, draw themselves plus a PutShadow drop shadow, and restore the exact background with PutTextBlock on close.
• Toolchain: Borland C++ 3.1 (bcc), with MicroText's asm { } blocks handled by the built-in inline assembler with no separate TASM pass.

Projects Using MicroApp

• Data Probe — A full-screen DOS HEX editor built on MicroApp.
• Perfect Ten — A sports and competition score management program. (Never completed)

📄 License

Released under the MIT License — Copyright © 1992 Rohin Gosling.