The Draw 4.x

TheDraw, from Ian E. Davis of TheSoft Programming Service, was a popular shareware ANSI graphics and animation editor used to make graphics for BBSes and DOS programs. It supported drawing lines, shapes, animations, and large fonts on to a text screen using colorful IBM PC drawing characters and was commonly used for producing menu screens on BBSes such as PCBoard and Wildcat, as well as BBS doors and games. Files were saved as "ANSI" text files containing text with ANSI escape control codes, much in the same way HTML is text with markup. This saved users the time of having to tediously code complex ANSI files by hand. It supported the use of the mouse, and high resolution EGA/VGA text screens.

The last version of TheDraw was 4.63. There was a reportedly a fake/scam TheDraw 5.00 floating around.

Screenshots