How to Change the Colors of a Wait Window in FoxPro for MS-DOS

• Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS, versions 2.0, 2.5, 2.5a, 2.5b, 2.6, 2.6a

SUMMARY

This article shows by example how to change the colors of a WAIT window. You can use the WAIT WINDOW command in FoxPro to display FoxPro system or user-defined messages. The WAIT window belongs to the 'Dialogs' family of FoxPro windows. This family uses color scheme five.

MORE INFORMATION

Color pairs one and three of color scheme five affect the colors of a WAIT window. Color pair one controls the color of normal text, and color pair three controls the window border color. No other color pairs for color scheme five apply to WAIT windows.

The following two examples illustrate how to set the WAIT window colors scheme.

Steps to Follow for Simple Color Change

1. In the Command window, enter:

   SET COLOR of SCHEME 5 to N/GB,,N/GB

2. In the Command window, enter:

   WAIT WINDOW 'Hello'

Steps to Follow for Blinking Text

1. In the Command window, enter:

   SET COLOR of SCHEME 5 to R*/W,,W/R

2. In the Command window, enter:

   WAIT WINDOW 'Hello'

To restore the color scheme back to the default colors, use this command:

   SET COLOR of SCHEME 5 TO

Additional Notes

When color pairs one and three of color scheme five are changed, the appearance of other system dialogue windows (such as FileOpen, DatabaseSetup, ProgramDo, and others) are also affected. To keep these dialogue windows looking consistent, you need to change some of the color pairs of other color schemes. For example, color pairs two and six of color scheme six control the colors of the 'enabled option' and 'selected item' respectively.