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Re :XyScript: beginner questions



Reply to note from Edward Mendelson <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sun, 13 Sep 2026 11:09:03
-0400

Edward,

> I have a few basic questions, 

Thank you for giving it a try! My answers to your questions won't be completely satisfactory at this
stage, because "work in progress".

> How does one open the underlined items on the top-line menu? In  
> standard Windows applications, Alt-F opens the File menu, Alt-E the 
> Edit  menu, etc. This doesn't do anything in XyScript 

Currently, access to the menus is via the mouse only. Well, there is one other way. The MENU command
allows navigating the menus via the keyboard (arrow keys + Enter) -- it's assigned to F1 in the
default keyboard. Access via Alt-key combinations is on the to-do list.

> On my system (ordinary Intel graphics) the [path] field is almost 
> unreadable because it uses gray letters on a black background. What 
> needs to be done to make this field readable? 

You should be able to use the menus to fix this, but currently you can't. For now, you'll need to
use two commands: PAFGCOLORS for the path foreground color and PABGCOLORS for the background color.
Each command opens a color picker; adjust the color as desired, then command `SAVECFG my.cfg` to
save the settings to a config file. To make it persist, edit startup.xpl so that your config file is
loaded at startup (commands are case-insensitive):

LOADCFG my.cfg

> The same unreadable color combination appears in the  
> currently-selected tab in the tab row below the top-line menu. What  
> setting changes this?

To change the tab background color the commands are `TABBGCOLORS active` and `TABBGCOLORS hover`.
The foreground color is governed by the user interface (UI) foreground color; adjust with
UIFGCOLORS. Again, to make the settings persist, command `SAVECFG my.cfg`.

> Perhaps we could have a PDF showing the UI elements with each one  
> labeled with its name so that we can identify it in the menu? 

Good idea, I'll see what I can do. The next release will support an alternative approach. Currently,
the SAVECFG command only records settings that the user has adjusted. In the next release, SAVECFG
will generate a comprehensive list of settings with the current or default values, so that settings
can more easily be changed the XyWrite way -- by editing a text file.

-- 
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxxxx