Ä Fido Pascal Conference ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ PASCAL Ä
Msg  : 323 of 474                                                               
From : Mark Ouellet                        1:240/20.4           09 Apr 93  20:37 
To   : Pat Jankowski                                                             
Subj : Pascal & ANSI                                                          
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
    On 05 Apr 93 , you, Pat Jankowski, of 1:280/317.0 wrote...

 PJ> How would I get my Pascal program to display ANSI menus?  I 
 PJ> don't want to fool around with the setforeground and background colors.  
 PJ> I would rather have it just display a file.  How would I do this? 

    RULE 1
        if you use the CRT unit anywhere in your main program or if any
        of the units you use use it, then you need to reinstate
        redirectability so that normal screen output goes through DOS
        rather than being handled by TP.

        for that add these 4 lines at the start of your program:

            Assign(Input, '');   {Reassign Input to Standard Input}
            Assign(OutPut, '');  {Reassign Output to Standard OutPut}
            Reset(Input);        {Reopen it for reading}
            Rewrite(OutPut);     {Reopen it for writing}

    RULE 2
        if you don't use the CRT unit anywhere in your program then you
        might have to add this command to your program:

            DirectVideo := False;

        I'm not sure about this one, I think it redirects video I/O
        through BIOS rather than DOS or Vice-Versa.


    RULE 3
        Ansi.sys or an equivalent ANSI driver needs to be present in the
        machine. Either loaded from config.sys if a .SYS file, loaded
        from Autoexec.bat or Config.sys if .COM or .EXE file. (Some
        .EXE/.COM files are actually device drivers loadable from
        config.sys)

    That's all there is to it. Just read your menu file as normal text
    and simply write it out to screen. Ansi.sys will take care of the
    rest. If you need to output ANSI colored text from your program
    simply include the ANSI sequence needed in the write string.

        Example: To clear the screen simply do a:

            write(#27,'[2J');

        This writes an <ESC>[2J= Ansi clear screen command.
            <ESCAPE>=(#27)

        Best regards,
        Mark Ouellet.