[Coco] [Color Computer] Vcc OS-9 keyboard mapping

[Bill Pierce]

Wayne, you are right. They used to be set up to display 4 (I think, maybe 5) windows at once... to me, completely unusable. And the colors were awfull !!. I have a tendacy to run 2-3 full screen text editors at once. I also like to have full control of the windows, not someones idea of "that's cool!". I hate to have to redefine a window just to list a directory in one window while I'm editing in another, compiling C code in another, and testing the compiled code in another... all at full screen. I wore out the lettering on my [CLEAR] key long ago :-)

According to Tandy, a "properly" written program should always set up it's own window, never assumimg "defaults" or that the user is in the type you need. Then when exiting the program, always reset all windows values back to what they were originally. I truely HATE coming out of a progrm to find myself in a "pink on purple", 40 col graphics screen that I can't even read it well enough to type the cmds to get my screen back. I find VERY FEW programs that actually do this. Even Multivue, MV Canvas, and Ed 3.1 all leave you in a "graphics" screen at whatever resolution you were running in the program. Multivue can leave you in some really odd screens sometime. Too bad Tandy couldn't follow their own programming guide lines. The worst are those that don't clear their "overlays" and leave you in a small "dialog" box that you have to kill to get back to full screen.
This is something I have tried my best to incorporate in every program I write. It's actually not an easy thing to do as you have to do "getstat" (with the proper buffers set up) to get the current window settings, save them, kill the window, create the new window, then do "setstat" to change it back when done.
Zack Sessions (Color Systems Software) actually wrote a "C" library (it's on RTSI) function to do this automatically for you (back in the late 80s or early 90s). All you do is "#include <window.h>", then init the buffer variable to keep the settings (32 bytes?, can't remember now). You call "getwin(buffer)" to save the window settings, then call "setwin(buffer)" to get them back.... No more "pink on purple" windows LOL

And on the whole "/W5" thing... in checking the default "/W5", it is set to be:


wmode /w5
col=13 row=0B wnd=05 val=01 sty=FF cpx=3D cpy=00 fgc=02 bgc=07 bdc=04


Which makes it a 19x11 window of "the current window type" (FF) starting a col 61 row 0 with black chars on cyan background with a red border. So this window cannot be called from a fullscreen window as no window can overlap another window so the "shell i=/w5&" call will fail leaving the new shell running the current window. To use this window, you would have to first "kill" the current window (DWEnd) then open /W5. I know there are ways around this, but I'm pretty sure it can't just be called directly.
I tried it on VCC and my Coco 3... no go.
Here are wmodes of each default window from /term to /w7 :

wmode /term
col=50 row=18 wnd=00 val=01 sty=02 cpx=00 cpy=00 fgc=02 bgc=03 bdc=03


wmode /w1
col=1B row=0B wnd=01 val=01 sty=01 cpx=00 cpy=00 fgc=02 bgc=00 bdc=04


wmode /w2
col=0C row=0B wnd=02 val=01 sty=FF cpx=1C cpy=00 fgc=00 bgc=01 bdc=01


wmode /w3
col=28 row=0C wnd=03 val=01 sty=FF cpx=00 cpy=0C fgc=02 bgc=07 bdc=01


wmode /w4
col=3C row=0B wnd=04 val=01 sty=02 cpx=00 cpy=00 fgc=00 bgc=01 bdc=04


wmode /w5
col=13 row=0B wnd=05 val=01 sty=FF cpx=3D cpy=00 fgc=02 bgc=07 bdc=04


wmode /w6
col=50 row=0C wnd=06 val=01 sty=FF cpx=00 cpy=0C fgc=02 bgc=00 bdc=04


wmode /w7
col=50 row=18 wnd=05 val=01 sty=02 cpx=00 cpy=00 fgc=00 bgc=01 bdc=01

I haven't had a boot with "/w8" - "/w15" in over 25 years so I couldn't tell you what they are.



To be honest, I haven't use a boot with the above defaults in over 25 years either :-)


Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
 

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