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Bill, >there seems to >be no way to use these colors without the dots. It depends on your terminal (or terminal emulation). Those colors always include "column separators", but some devices let you configure the style of column separators or let you turn them off completely. For example, with Client Access you'd use the menu item Appearance | Color Mapping, then select Category Others and Element: Column Separators. On some dumb terminals you can press the Setup key and follow the on-screen instructions. >Any why are some colors, pink for example, not able to display HI, CS, and >BL, but they will RI and UL? It is due to design constraints in the original 5250 data stream. Unlike PCs, the design called for a single display buffer the size of the screen instead of twice the size with one half keeping the displayed characters and the other half keeping the attributes for a given location. Therefore, display attributes consume one byte each on the display, and remain in effect until the next attribute byte is found in the buffer. Since attributes therefore coexist with displayed data, it follows you have fewer possible choices for "characters" which are interpreted as display attributes. The design called for only those characters in the range of x'20' through x'3F' to be considered display attributes. This basically means there are only five bits available to control all normal attribute combinations. These were assigned to high intensity, reverse image, underline, blink, and column separator. You could do any combination of those, except if the first three listed above were turned on together, it represented non-display. (Remember at the time, there were no such thing as color displays.) When color came along, there were still only 5 bits available. So colors were mapped to the various combinations. Given the design constraints, the mapping is IMHO pretty reasonable. Later, the 5250 data stream was enhanced to provide the ability to have "extended attributes" which do not consume a position on the display. However, these also require devices which support the "write extended attributes" 5250 data stream order. With these devices, it is possible to get lots of different color and attribute combinations, even in adjacent positions on the display. However, support for doing so has never been added to DDS, so you need to use DSM or UDDS to make much use of it. Why doesn't DDS support it? Probably because not enough people complain, so IBM likely doesn't consider it high enough on the priority list. A user program which attempts to do it via DSM or UDDS needs to first query the WS controller and device to make sure the WEA (write extended attribute) order is supported. If it is sent to an older controller or WS which does not recognize it, an escape message is issued for a device error. Doug +--- | This is the RPG/400 Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to RPG400-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to RPG400-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to RPG400-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---
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