JUNE 1990

NEWSLETTER OF ThE LOS ANGELES AREA FOXPRO I FOXBASE USER GROUP

Tom Rettig’s FoxPro Handbook

[The following discussion on Fox-

Pro color schemes is excerpted with

permission from Tom Rettig’s Fox-

Pro Handbook,published by Bantam

Books. J

Color Pair

Setting a single display color re-

quires specifying two color codes,

one for the foreground (text) color

and one for the background. These

two codes, separated by a forward

slash, are called a color “pair,” with

the foreground specified first and the

background last. For example, W/B

produces white on blue, and RG+/B

produces yellow (actually bright

brown) on blue.

Most commands take a comma-

delimited list of color pairs, with each

pair in the list setting the color of a

particular display object according to

its position in the list. For example,

SET COLOR TO takes a list of four

color pairs.

SET COLOR TO

[<standard >] [,[<enhanced>]

[,[<perimeter>]

[,[<background> ]]]]]

<standard> is the color for out-

put text and unselected items. <en-

hanced> is the color for input text

and selected items. <perimeter> is

the color for the screen border on

some monitors. <background> is

the color for some monitors that do

not recognize the second color in a

pair for the background setting. The

actual command might look like this:

SEF COLOR TO W+/B, W+/G, 0, B

or like this:

colors = " W+/B, W +/G, G, W

SET COLOR TO &colors

Some commands like

@...SAY...COLOR take a shorter color

pair list, and others like SET COLOR

OF SCHEME take a longer one. If a

specified color pair list is shorter than

the list which the command accepts,

only the specified color pairs are

changed.

L.A. FOX

President’s Report

by Greg Dunn

Thanks to Tom Rettig for helping

the Los Angeles Foxbase/FoxPro

User Group get off to a great start.

MOre than 100 people were in atten-

dance for Tom’s presentation: “Fox-

Pro - The New Standard”. It was

nearly 11 o’clock when the last dog

was hung!

We in the Los Angeles area are

favored with access to many of the

“stars” in the Fox world - like Tom

Rettig. For those who may have

missed it, our May meeting was also

honored with the attendance of

George Goley, who writes the Fox

column for Data-Based Advisor.

George was in town teaching FoxPro

Color Scheme

A complete color pair list com-

prises ten color pairs and is called a

color “scheme.” Different features

use different color schemes to deter-

mine their displays. For example,

user-defined windows use color

scheme number one to get the colors

for output, input, border, titles,

selected items, the clock, and window

shadow.

SET COLOR OF SCHEME 1 TO;

" W+/B W+/BG, RG+/B, RG+/B,’ +;

‘R÷/B, W + /RG RG+/RB, N+/N,’ +;

"RG+/B, R+/B

Only the first 11 schemes affect

the display of objects, and the last 13

continued on page 2

User-defined pop-up menus use color scheme number two, dialogs

use color scheme number five, and so on as in the following table.

SCHEME FEATURE

•

1

Userwindows

2

User menus

3

System menu bar •

•

•

••

4

System menu pop-ups

5

Dialogs and system messages

6

Dialog pop-ups

Alerts (dialogs with no input)

•

•~

8

System windows

•

9

System window pop-UpS

•

•

10

BROWSE, CHANGE, EDiT •

11

CREATE/MODIFY REPORT

12-24

Inactive unless specified

seminars under the sponsorship of

Pinnacle Publishing.

Rounding out a triumvirate of Fox

titans was Richard Grossman, presi-

dent of Tech III, Inc. and author of

the PmDemo application bundled

with your copy of FoxPro. The

presence of these three Fox gurus,

along with your attendance, made the

Right Way Computer Learning Cen-

ter, where our meeting was held, one

of the most important places in the

Fox universe on May 8!

For our June 12 meeting Richard

will take center stage to address the

group on the topic, “ProDemo Un-

veiled.” ProDemo is a goldniine of

FoxPro tips and techniques, and

continued on page 5