Free Paint 1.0 is a small mouse-driven paint program I wrote in October 1995 in Borland Turbo Pascal 7, while I was learning two things at once: how to use the mouse, and how to leave the 80x25 text mode of DOS for graphics. Turbo Pascal's Graph unit, the Borland Graphics Interface (BGI), switches the screen to 640x480 VGA with 16 colors and lets you draw on it pixel by pixel, and the mouse driver tells you where the pointer is and which buttons are down. Put the two together in a loop and you have a paint program.
The development snapshots I kept show the whole program written in one sitting on October 20, 1995. At 02:48 I was reading Borland's sample code for the graphics mode. At 03:57 I had a first test that put one green pixel wherever the mouse was while a button was held. By half past six it had the control bar with its color strip, by a quarter past nine it could save a picture, by eleven it was the editor it still is, and at 11:51 I wrote the viewer.
Thirty-one years later, in October 2026, I brought it back to life in DOSBox Staging on Windows. It still works, saved pictures included.
FREEPNT <file> opens a picture, or starts a new one, in the editor. Paint by holding down a mouse button over the picture, and use the control bar below it for everything else:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Color strip | Selects one of the 16 VGA colors to paint with |
| Brush buttons 1-9 | Selects the brush size, from a single pixel up to a 9x9 square |
| Clear Image | Fills the whole picture with the selected color |
| Save | Saves the picture to its file |
| Quit / Q | Quits, asking to save first if the picture has changed |
FREEPNTV <file> shows a saved picture until you press Q. Both programs print a short help screen when run without a file name, and add the .FE1 extension when you leave it out.
Free Paint doesn't draw lines. Each time it reads the mouse, it stamps a square of the brush size where the pointer is, with nothing in between. A slow stroke overlaps its squares into a solid line, and a fast one leaves them apart as a trail of separate dabs. That is the program's character, and the sample picture of fireworks is made of exactly such flicks.
- Starting the editor on a new file creates that file right away. Quit without saving, and it stays behind empty, and both programs then refuse to open it with "Error reading picture file". Delete it to use the name again.
- The brush grows up and left from the tip of the pointer, and the single-pixel brush paints one pixel up and left of it.
A Free Paint picture is the 632x410 picture area saved as raw BGI GetImage data, with no header of its own: nine horizontal strips, eight of 51 lines and a last one of 5 lines that overlaps the eighth by 3. Each strip holds its width and height, then each line as four bit planes, so every file is exactly 130,562 bytes.
The browser version runs the same DOS programs in js-dos, a DOSBox port for the web, and opens the editor on the fireworks so you can paint over them right away. Pictures you save stay in your browser. After you quit, type FREEPNT FIREWORK at the DOS prompt to paint again, or FREEPNTV FIREWORK to view the picture.
Chrome and Edge can also install it as an app, and Safari can add it to the Dock or the Home Screen. It then opens in its own window, but still needs an internet connection.
The ZIP contains the editor and the viewer, Borland's EGAVGA.BGI graphics driver that they load at startup, the fireworks picture, a short readme, and the MIT license. Unzip it into one folder and run FREEPNT FIREWORK from there in DOSBox Staging or any DOS-compatible environment with a mouse driver.
I build and run Freepnt using DOSBox Staging on Windows, with a copy of Borland Turbo Pascal 7.0 downloaded from WinWorld:
- Mount the project directory and the Turbo Pascal installation in DOSBox Staging
- Copy
EGAVGA.BGIfrom Turbo Pascal'sBGIdirectory into the directory you start the IDE from, since both programs load it from the current directory - Launch
TURBO.EXEand set Options > Directories to point at theUNITS\path - Open
SRC\FREEPNT.PASorSRC\FREEPNTV.PAS - Press Alt+F9 to compile, Ctrl+F9 to run
To build from the command line instead, run python scripts/build.py. It compiles both programs in DOSBox Staging without opening the IDE, and checks that each result is byte-identical to the EXE in the v1.0.0 release. Set DOSBOX to the DOSBox Staging executable and DOS_C_DIR to the folder that DOSBox mounts as C:, with Turbo Pascal installed in it. The script looks for the compiler at C:\BP\BIN\TPC.EXE and for the graphics driver at C:\BP\BGI\EGAVGA.BGI; set TPC and BGI if yours are elsewhere, for example C:\TP\BIN\TPC.EXE. With --web, it also rebuilds the browser version in web/, and with --package, it writes the release ZIP to dist/.
SRC/
FREEPNT.PAS the editor
FREEPNTV.PAS the viewer
FPTOOLS.PAS screen layout, brushes and the picture file, shared by both
UNITS/
MOUSE.PAS mouse driver calls through INT 33h
FILLIB.PAS file name and file existence helpers
STDSTR.PAS string routines
INTEG.PAS integer and hexadecimal routines
STDCHAR.PAS character types and digit/hex constants
CRTKEYB.PAS keyboard input with extended-key handling
dist/
FIREWORK.FE1 the sample picture, for the browser version and the ZIP
README.TXT readme for the ZIP
LICENSE.TXT license for the ZIP
web/
index.html browser version, running the DOS programs in js-dos
freepnt.jsdos js-dos bundle with both EXEs, the driver and the sample, written by build.py
manifest.webmanifest web app manifest, for installing it as an app
icons/ favicon and app icons
scripts/
build.py build, browser bundle and release ZIP
The six units are small and reusable on their own. STDCHAR.PAS and CRTKEYB.PAS are the same files as in Toggtime, and they may eventually move into a shared Hello World Writer Pascal library.
Freepnt is licensed under the MIT License.
Made with ❤️ in Oradea, Romania https://www.thehelloworldwriter.com