DRAW (instruction)

The DRAW command allows you to draw line segments and rectangles on the screen, forming one of the basic building blocks for creating simple graphics. This command can be used to draw coordinate axes and data points, to create characters, environments, and objects, to draw windows, buttons, and other interface elements.

It starts drawing from the coordinates (x1, y1) to arrive at the coordinates (x2, y2), using the color c. The start or the final coordinates can be omitted: in this case, ugBASIC will draw, respectively, starting from the last drawn position and arriving at the last drawn position. If the color is omitted, the last color selected with the INK or PEN command will be used.

The DRAW command offers several additional options to customize the drawing. After the color, that is optinal, you can put the letter B to draw a rectangle. The letters BF means that the rectangle must be filled, too. Finally, the default line style is normally "complete" but a 16 bit bitmask can be set with the SET LINE command. You can also select the mode that can be PSET or PRESET. If PSET is used the line is drawn in the current foreground colour. If PRESET, the line is drawn in the background colour.

The accuracy of the drawings is limited by the resolution of the screen, and drawing many lines can slow down the program, especially on 8-bit computers.