Text Mode

There are several features unique to the Text Mode of Operation of the Screen Painter.

• Widgets are placed on the character grid.

• Dimensions and origins are displayed based on character cells.

• Text mode terminals come in monochrome and color. The monochrome text mode enables the tailoring of text mode screens to monochrome terminals. Instead of choosing colors for widgets, display modes can be chosen. Display Modes include underline, blink (mapped to italic on Windows), highlight and reverse video. Tailoring a screen for a monochrome terminal will not affect its appearance on a color terminal.

• Grid menu options are grayed.

• Preferences menu options is grayed. Certain preferences can be set in Graphical mode and are still in effect when Text mode is toggled on (using the Coordinates pulldown).

• Fill characters are displayed in PAINT mode in data entry fields and the entry portion of combo boxes. The fill characters appear as dots and simulate Zims default fill character; they are not meant to simulate the fill character that actually exists for the widget (as it does not usually translate well between character sets). This dot-like fill character is visible only in PAINT mode.

• Toggle buttons (radio buttons and check boxes) are made two characters larger than they might appear to require to account for Text environments square brackets [ ]. Currently, blanks are appended after the text of the checkbox. A proposed enhancement might redesign checkboxes so that the field is made large enough without looking too big.

• Pushbuttons that are only one row high can use a shadowed borderstyle. The shadow takes up an extra row below the button and an extra column to the right of the button. Although the shadowed border attribute can be set in the Screen Painter, it is not visible in either PAINT or TEST mode.