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[alangr]

I am doing some very simple text handling and want to have a choice of colours with the results put on screen. In FTN77, I used COUP@ and this still works with FTN95 although I cannot find any reference to in in the User Notes and I have not been able to get the blinking aspect to work.

How should I put a character to the screen with a specified colour; and is it possible to make it blink?

Thanks.
_________________
Alan

[PaulLaidler]

Alan

I am guessing that you are writing to a DOS box. Perhaps you could post a short sample program that illustrates what you can do at the moment.

Writing coloured text in a Windows application is quite simple using ClearWin+ but text that blinks may be more tricky.

The lack of documentation for COUP@ etc. simply reflects the fact that such routines have become outmoded.

[alangr]

Paul

I am writing to the screen from DOS but not formally a 'DOS box'. Essentially I am doing what I had done in FTN77. As an example this is intended to provide an alternating green/red character on screen. When I run this code step by step all is well. when I just run it the screen remains blank until about 15 seconds has passed and execution stops.

DO 10 K=1,15
COLR=2
CALL COUP@(TILE, COLR, IV, IH)
CALL SLEEP@(1)
COLR=4
CALL COUP@(TILE, COLR, IV, IH)
10 CONTINUE

If I had set one of the two COUP@ calls to colour black, I was hoping to make the character on screen blink slowly.

I quite understand the fact that the COUP@ is now outmoded but wish to do something like this using FTN95.

I have not used ClearWin+ yet; is this my way forward?

Sorry, coming to this from the past.
_________________
Alan

[PaulLaidler]

Alan

I was asking for a short working program that one could run without modification.

Maybe it would then be possible to transcribe this into ClearWin+ to get you started.

[alangr]

Paul

Here is the body of a program that works to produce a character alternating from green to red. With SDBG stepping through gives the desired effect. Running the program (F6) just gives a blank screen until the loop is complete.

PROGRAM TEST
*
INTEGER*2 K, IH, IV, COLR
CHARACTER TILE*1
*
CALL CLEAR_SCREEN@
*
TILE=CHAR(35)
IH=5
IV=7
*
DO 10 K=1,15
COLR=2
*
CALL COUP@(TILE, COLR, IH, IV)

CALL SLEEP@(1)
*
COLR=4
CALL COUP@(TILE, COLR, IH, IV)
*
CALL SLEEP@(1)
10 CONTINUE
*
STOP
*
END

I would welcome your comments of moving this to ClearWin+

Thanks
_________________
Alan

[PaulLaidler]

Here is a sample program that uses %tx to create the equivalent of a DOS box with coloured text. If it is relevant then I can think about how to make part of the text blink. It is also possible to write coloured text using %eb.

[alangr]

Thank you for your response.

I will see what I can do working from your example. I think the flashing aspect is not a priority right now.

Thank you for your help.
_________________
Alan

[PaulLaidler]

Here is a better sample for writing coloured text to a DOS box array of characters. Readers should note that writing text to a window is normally very simple as in iw = winio@("Hello World").