Msg: Re: vDosxy color schemes, easily achieved

Carl,

You're right -- the default is white on black; I was getting green text because

of an MD NM setting in the printer file. It never occurred to me that that green

wasn't intended, since green on black faithfully replicated the first IBM

monochrome monitor; an unintended piece of nostalgia, as it turns out.

It's tempting to keep playing with all that abundance, but I think I found what,

for me, is the best overall arrangement: either MD NM = 240 in the printer

file, or setting the color value to #edf1f3 in config.sys and MD=2 in the printer file.

This gives black text on a low-glare off-white background. Unexciting,

but less tiring that more colorful alternatives.

From: Carl Distefano
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2015 5:45 PM
Subject: Re: vDosxy color schemes, easily achieved

Reply to note from "John Paines" mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxx

(Redacted sender "mailto:vf200@xxxxxxxx" for DMARC) Sat, 2 May 2015
16:03:05 +0000 (UTC)

John,

> If you don't like the green on black default (I don't), 3-digit
> MD NM values in the xy3 printer file generate an apparently
> endless number of text/background color combinations.

I thought the default was white on black -- that's what I get when I
don't set any "COLORS =" in CONFIG.TXT. Maybe you have MD NM set in
one of your printer files?

You can get some eye-catching color schemes in XyWrite if you have
the patience to experiment with the 16 sets of RGB values in
CONFIG.TXT. The problem with setting colors in CONFIG.TXT is that you
can't test color schemes on the fly: you have to restart vDos every
time to see your changes. It's laborious. However, you can narrow
down the 11 million+ (256^3) possible RGB combinations by using an
RGB lookup tool to view and choose the values. There are many of
these on the Web, for example:

http://www.rapidtables.com/web/color/RGB_Color.htm

The 16 triplet RGB settings in CONFIG.TXT will correspond to MoDes 0
through 15 in XyWrite. The first triplet will correspond to the
background color (MoDe 0), and the eighth triplet to the foreground
text color (MoDe 7). Once you have MoDe values 0-255, you can
predict, or rather calculate, how each of the MoDes 0 through 255
will look. The foreground color is the whole-number quotient of the
the MoDe value divided by 16; the background color is the remainder.
For example, MoDe 133 has a foreground color of 8 (133//16 = 8) and
background color of 5 (133 modulo 16 = 5).

Don't know about you, but for me fiddling with screen colors is one
of the best (or worst) ways on earth to fritter away time.

--
Carl Distefano
mailto:cld@xxxxxxxx