Microsoft KB Archive/26768

= Colored Text in SCREEN 1 in QB Versions 2.x and 3.00, Not 4.00 =

Article ID: 26768

Article Last Modified on 11/21/2006



This article was previously published under Q26768



SUMMARY
For QuickBasic Versions 2.00, 2.01, and 3.00, it was reported that a particular POKE statement forces colored text from the PRINT statement when using SCREEN 1. This method does NOT work in QuickBasic Versions 4.00, 4.00b, 4.50 [or in Microsoft Basic Compiler Versions 6.00, 6.00b, or in Microsoft Basic Professional Development System (PDS) Version 7.00] due to significant internal changes in how video graphics are created.

The COLOR statement, not the POKE statement, should be used to change the color of text.

You need to use SCREEN 0, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, or 13 if you want more than one color of text displayed at once on the screen. On these screens, you can invoke the desired COLOR statement followed by a PRINT statement to get a desired text color. (QuickBasic Version 4.00 or later is required to support SCREEN 11, 12, or 13.) Note: The COLOR statement cannot be invoked in monochrome SCREEN 2 or 11.

Note: In SCREEN 1, the COLOR statement cannot change the foreground (text) color -- it can only change the background color and the palette. As a result, for a given background color, you may only have one color of text on the screen at once in SCREEN 1 in QuickBasic 4.00, 4.00b, 4.50, in Basic Compiler 6.00, 6.00b, and in Basic PDS 7.00. To work around this limitation by using a BIOS interrupt, search for a separate article with the following words:

INTERRUPT and HEX and 10 and FUNCTION and 9 and COLOR



MORE INFORMATION
The following is a code example that shows multiple text colors on the screen at once in QuickBasic Versions 2.00, 2.01, or 3.00, but not in later versions: 'Numbering scheme for colors: '   0 - black                 2 - light magenta '   1 - light blue            3 - white SCREEN 1 DEF SEG POKE &H53, 2               ' numbers 0-3 give colored text PRINT &quot;HELLO in light magenta&quot; POKE &H53, 1 PRINT &quot;HELLO in simultaneous light blue&quot;

Additional query words: QuickBas BasicCom

Keywords: KB26768

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