🚀 go-pugleaf

  I normaly wouldn't respond to this since Keith posted that he had the
answer to his problem.  Unfortunately his message indicates that he may
not have the whole answer (and since the problem is partialy of his own
doing) I felt obligated to try to set things straight...  I appologise
in advance if Keith does understand this and I'm "explaining" without
being asked... (even if I am anyway... :^)

[hedger@inmet.inmet.com writes...]
> 
> Got it!  I am posting this in case anyone else out there gets bitten.
> First of all, the main problem was in fact user error. None of the
> docs that I had mentioned that when you are in medium resolution you
> can only use 4 colors (I knew that), but they also failed to mention 
> that you can also use only the FIRST four colors. 

  Serious question.. Which four colors would you expect?

> These are supposed to be 0=black,1=white,2=red, and 3=green.

  They normaly are...

> Not so, in fact 0=black,1=white,2=green and 3=blue. Anything else
> returns white. It never occurred to me to just try each color in 
> order, big mistake it turns out.
> Anyway, that's the answer to this problem and I am going to call
> Mark Williams and let them know they have what appears to be a 
> documentation error.

  The color numbers used by the vsf_color function only refer to the
individual pallet numbers from the current color pallet, not to some
absolute color code.  MW should have made this clear in their manual.

  The "0=black,1=white,2=red, and 3=green" -are- the default colors.
MW also should have made it clear in their manual that these are the
"normal" colors you get from those pallet values, not absolute colors.
(I'm rather suprised and disapointed in the MW phoneline support if
this answer wasn't obvious to them...)  If you've gone and changed the
default colors (using a control panel or similar utility), then you're
not going to get the colors MW listed for a normal setup...

  Medium rez allows 4 colors on-screen at a time.  Unless you're good
with interrupts and assembly language, that's the limit, period...
Unless your program alters the color pallet instead of just selecting
colors from the current pallet, the colors your program will show on
the screen are going to be whatever default screen colors you've chosen
to use for your machine...

  PS:  If you do choose to alter the color pallet, then please take the
time to read the default pallet on entry to your program and restore
all of the default pallet entries on exit.  (There aren't many programs
that become very popular that alter the users chosen screen colors
without putting them back before exiting...)

---
John Stanley <dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP>
Software Consultant / Dynasoft Systems