Re: Window Size

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

We have been round this mulberry bush so often, I tried to do a
bit of extensive testing. There are several factors in the equation:
1. As Robert pointed out on 12/23/03, one cannot just pick a
number, any number. There are certain numbers of lines that are
legit, others that are not, and they will vary with the VGA BIOS
and the screen resolution.
2. We have here interaction of the VGA BIOS, the Properties of
the VDM, and Xy itself.
Some very tentative conclusions (this really should be tested on
more BIOSes and screens, but I will send the raw data [123 or OO
spreadsheet] to anyone who wants it) are these:
In both XP and Vista, if you want something other than the
standard 25-line screen you may have to run Xy under command.com
(that is, your shortcut points directly to d:\xy4\editor.exe--or
whatever the fully qualified path to editor.exe is). The actual
lines displayed will be 20 or 21, 38 for sl=43, 45 for sl=50,
depending on font, screen res., and possibly other factors.
Recall that, as Robert also said at one point, one must allow for
the "header" lines (CoMmandLine, PromptLine, ruler; and I suspect
the line that specifies the file open in that window may also count).
When Xy is forced to run under cmd.exe (i.e., the shortcut points
to c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c d:\xy4\editor.exe; and that is
the only way you can get a distinctive icon to display everywhere
in XP and at all in Vista), you may be able to get a few
additional lines in your display, but the cursor's behavior
becomes erratic: at the bottom of the screen, you have to hit
CursorDown 3 to 22 times to get it to move to the next line, and
the cursor disappears.
I also observed that one must set the VDM's screen length (by
right-clicking the title-bar of the open Xy window,
Properties->Layout, changing the Screen Length figure, telling it
to Save properties for future windows with the same title),
closing Xy, then reopening and resetting Default SL. If you try
to change Default SL within the session where you changed the
VDM's screen length, things can get scrambled.
If one's purpose is simply to have a larger window, one can
always do that by enlarging the font (As I pretty much have to
use 20 point Lucida Console, anything more than 25 lines would be
off the screen anyway); but if you really want more lines on the
screen at once, you'd better NOT invoke cmd.exe.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx