Wednesday May 22 1996 07:15, Jason Wright wrote to Peter Watney:

 JW> You seem to know a bit of ASM cursor stuff so I was wondering if you knew
 JW> how to set the screen to a 26 line mode, write text on the 26th line and
 JW> then exit the program with the text still staying there - even after DOS
 JW> cls's?? I seen it done so it's possible.  I just wish I knew how!!!

The screen mode is set with an instruction to the video card, and what is
shown on the screen is a function of the mode and what is in the video
memory.

So far, all the programs that I have written have taken care to initialise
the screen on start up, and return the screen to a neutral position at
close.

When your program terminates, what do you want to appear on the screen, and
how do you want to control what your computer does next?

If when you exit your program you wish to hand control over to DOS, you are
going to need DOS to show its prompt, aren't you?

Your operating system is a program in its own right, and has a screen
handling function, so do you wish to override that and show its prompt, etc
through some sort of filter imposed by you?  If so, you need to write that
filter program through which DOS can exercise its control.

My filter program is called MAINMENU.EXE, and that shows exactly what I
want it to show in the form of menu pages with the time and date on the
bottom line, and is written in black on white, with a black screen taking
over after x minutes of no action.

So actually I never see the normal DOS prompt, because I never hand over
control to DOS.  There is always an intervening program, which I can make
show whatever I like on the screen, but I still make sure that every
program that I write starts the screen handling from the mode etc that I
want, and returns the screen to neutral when it finishes or when it hands
over control to another program.

Regards,
Peter

--- GEcho 1.00