ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/MAGAZINE/MISC/MNFEB91.ZIP/ANSITIP

Text File | 1991-01-26 | 5.1 KB | 186 lines

                                ANSI.SYS
                                --------







ANSI stands for AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE. This is the  group who
sets the standards for all of us. In other words, they see to it that things
are made in a way that is compatable with others...sot of.

DOS is limited as to what it can do when it comes to displaying text on the
screen. The dialogue between you and DOS is on a line by line basis. ANSI.SYS
controls what happens on the screen. ANSI.SYS increases DOS's capacity by
about 5000 bytes, occupying that much more memory. If you are short on
memory, you may need to remove ANSI.SYS when you run a program that needs
extra space.










SETTING COLOR WITH ANSI:

     You are able to set screen colors with ANSI.SYS by the following:

             Here are the escape sequences for setting colors on the
     display. Don't forget to preceed and follow them with PROMPT:

     $e[0m                          Normal white on black
     $e[1m                          Bold or high intensity
     $e[4m                          Underline (if available)
     $e[5m                          Blinking
     $e[7m                          Reverse Video
     $e[8m                          Concealed (invisible)






Codes cont'd...

     -------------------------------------------------------
     $e[30m       Black foreground
     $e[31m       Red foreground
     $e[32m       Green foreground
     $e[33m       Yellow foreground
     $e[34m       Blue foreground
     $e[35m       Magenta foreground
     $e[36m       Cyan foreground
     $e[37m       White foreground
     $e[40m       Black background
     $e[41m       Red background
     $e[42m       Green background
     $e[43m       Yellow background
     $e[44m       Blue background
     $e[45m       Magenta background
     $e[46m       Cyan background
     $e[47m       White background

     The codes can be combined. All you need to do is enter the numbers
     one after another, but separated by a semicolon [;].








     EXAMPLES:
         $e[34;42m  displays blue characters on a green background.
         $e[1;33;41m displays bright (high intensity) yellow characters
                        on a red background.


SETTING COLORS WITH A BATCH FILE:

    At the A prompt type;
                            COPY CON BLUE.BAT
                            PROMPT $e[44;37m
                            PROMPT

Note that there was NO ECHO OFF statement in this BATCH FILE! If echo off was
put in, then the prompt wouldn't be displayed, and the ANSI driver wouldn't
get the message to change the color.



CUSTOMIZING THE PROMPT:

The normal prompt you see when you turn on your PC looks like this: A> You
can alter it to look like this: A:\>, or this HELLO>

The prompt, A:\> , is a custom prompt that not only looks better, it will
also display what DIRECTORY you are presently in. If you get out of the ROOT
DIR, and lets say you go into the Directory named 'DOS'

The prompt would now display like this:  A:DOS\>


EXAMPLES:
              prompt $p$g   customizes the prompt like this - A:\>
                            it looks better than, A:> and will also
                            let you know what DIRECTORY you are in.

              prompt DATE:$d TIME:$t$_$n$g
                                            Does this:
                         Date: Sat 12-25-19?? Time: 02:35:25:21
                         A:>




You can make the prompt say almost anything you want it to. But certian
characters have special meanings when preceeded by a dollar sign [$]

        $t   Displays the time       $d   Displays the date
        $p   Displays the current path
        $v   Displays the MS-DOS version
        $n   Displays the current drive name

To avoid confusing MS-DOS, several characters have codes to represent them
with or should we say when, included in prompting strings:

        $$   Displays the [$] character
        $q   Displays an equal [=] sign
        $g   Displays the greater than [>] symbol
        $l   Displays the less than [<] symbol
        $b   Displays the pipe [|] symbol
        $h   Executes a carriage return and line feed
             only kidding, it executes a backspace
        $_   This one executes a carriage return and line feed
        $e   Executes the escape (ASCII 27) code








If you are in doubt, or if you make a mistake and what your original prompt
back, simply type PROMPT, then enter.

You can also have the prompt customized to say your name:

EXAMPLE: If your name MICRONEWS, do this;

               PROMPT MICRONEWS >

         Then your prompt will look like this;   MICRONEWS >
















We hope that you enjoy working with these hints, as much as we have. As the
old saying goes, with Computers, there is no end as to what one can do today,
and as for tomorrow - your imagination is the limit!

In the future we will present more material on ANSI.  Like how you can use it
to program your function keys...and much more.

MICRONEWS...