Re: XyIII+ in WinXP

[Mark Garvey mark.garvey@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks, Wolfgang. Yes, Flash has been a great help.. and everyone else
as well.


Thank you for the heads-up on the DOS font issue. I will investigate the
link and keep tweaking away here.


best,
Mark



Wolfgang Bechstein wrote:
> Hello Mark,
>
> I like how you are approaching this: quick, hands-on action, trying out
> things and getting solutions. Of course, the Flash cards really help too,
> don't they?
>
>
> > Regarding selection of fonts, the selections I make when in windowed
> > mode have no effect on the full-screen font; it seems to stay the same
> > no matter what.
> >  
>
> You have just discovered a basic truth: there are no _Windows_ settings
> that you can tweak to change the look of the full-screen DOS font. None.
> Nada. Zilch. On that point, Flash is not quite correct. Microsoft of
> course "delivers with a selection of fonts" but none of these are
> available to the full-screen DOS session (although they immediately come
> into play once you Alt-Enter back to windowed mode). The look of the
> full-screen session is basically determined by your hardware. There are
> utilities such as Tame that can produce a large DOS window that looks
> like full screen and offers remarkably flexible control over its
> appearance, but they are still _windowed_ sessions.
>
> Howmuchsoever, and all of the above notwithstanding, there _is_
> something you can do to the fonts in full-screen mode, only it's not in
> any Windows dialog box where you do it. Like Xy itself, this harks back
> to the days when DOS was DOS and dat was dat. Even mice were still
> largely living underground.
>
> This guy demonstrates it with some flair, and he has the fonts available
> for quick and entirely free download:
>
> http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/09/20/dos-fonts/
>
> While many of the fonts in the above collection are good for a quick
> laugh but not much more, I am fortunate in owning another long-gone
> software gem from DOSe days, a program called Ultravision. This is a
> utility and DOS font collection that actually _increases_ the resolution
> of the fonts as displayed on the DOS screen (by some feats of hardware
> poking magic that are quite beyond my understanding). The improvement is
> not as dramatic as going to a real high-resolution display, but it's a
> clear step up from plain DOS. I have been using it for yonks, mostly in
> conjunction with Windows 98 SE, where it works well indeed, but I am
> happy to report that it even works in full-screen DOS sessions under
> Windows XP. It does require that the ANSI driver is loaded, though,
> which can be done by including the line
>
>
> device=%systemroot%\system32\ansi.sys
>
> in CONFIG.NT.
>
> The bad news is that Ultravision is not in the public domain and may not
> be findable out there. Also, it is quite hardware sensitive and may
> behave in different ways on different 'puters. So maybe it's best if you
> start with the free DOS stuff from the link above and see how far that
> takes you.
>
> XyWrite for me is also first and foremost a writing tool (I use it many
> hours per day). As for full screen vs. windowed mode, I employ both and
> toggle back and forth at will, depending on my mood and what else I am
> doing at the time, but I want both to look their best (and that includes
> having a good range of fonts and color choices at one's fingertips).
>
> Best o' luck in tweaking your setup to do just what you need!
>
> Wolfgang Bechstein
> bechstein@xxxxxxxx