timk@xenitec.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) (03/30/90)
Talk about quick response! I've gotten quite a few responses to the 2 questions I posed, 1) re: changing the text color on a screen 2) the return value of "system" Both of these with respect to the Turbo C env. With respect to the first question - the problem is that one has to use "cprintf" not "printf" when writing to the console and you want to get color text out instead of the default color. Yes, it does say in the manual that one should use cprintf, but when it says use functions *like* cprintf, I would think other functions would work too. I was incorrect in that assumption. Oh well (that's what I get for not reading the fine print...) With regards to the question about return value of the "system" call, it will always return a TRUE value if it can find the command processor, and only if it can't will it return a FALSE. A couple of people suggested using "spawn" instead, however, I haven't been able to get spawn to run some of the "built-in" commands to DOS (like dir and the like). If there's a way to spawn something like that I'd be more than willing to punt the system call. ------ Now for the next questions - how - in TC - do I put the screen of an EGA/VGA into 43/50 line mode (yes - I've read the manual and it makes no mention of it that I can find!), and having accomplished that, how do I move the cursor to a location beyond the 25th line boundary? I've got another program that puts the screen into 50 line mode on my VGA setup, but gotoxy refuses to move the cursor past the 24th line on the display, and just ignores the command I issue to do so. Gettextinfo also reports the display is 25 by 80 when it's in 50 x 80 mode. ---- Thanks for the comments so far - once I get answers to these quesitons I should be ok for the rest of what I want to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Timothy D. Kuehn TDK Consulting Services 871 Victoria St. North, Kitchener, voice: (519)-741-3623 Ontario, Canada N2B 3S4 DOS/Xenix - SW/HW. uC uP RDBMS timk@xenitec.on.ca !watmath!maytag!xenitec!timk No disclaimer here - I *am* the company! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------