For more information about the general subject of DOS or Windows environment configurations and managing them, see About Personal Win4Lin Session Configurations.
Win4Lin by default automatically sets the size of the fonts used in the DOS window. This font size is based on the resolution of your Desktop, and is either 6x13 or 8x14.
In the Display area, select one of the following DOS Font sizes from the pop-up list:
When you run CGA or Hercules graphics DOS applications (i.e. low resolution DOS graphics) on the Desktop, Win4Lin automatically displays the either in original resolution or by doubling the size. Normally this is what you want to have done, but if you want to force it to either do one or the other, you use this control to set it the way you want.
In the Display area, you can select one of the following choices for Scale DOS Graphics:
You should normally leave this setting on Automatic, unless you have a DOS program that requires the use of a MDA, old style Hercules monochrome graphics or CGA graphics. Because VGA emulation is not supported in an X window, you can use this control to force the use of non-VGA modes when you run DOS graphics applications on X terminals.
NOTE: When using Windows you normally should always leave this set to Automatic.
When you install DOS applications, be sure to configure them for the type of display adapter you are using. If you need to run an application in a less powerful display than the one you are using, you can start the DOS session with an alternate display mode.
You can choose two ways for your Windows applications to make use of
colors on your display.
The standard way is to share the colormap.
The alternative way is to have your Windows session use a private colormap.
To select the colormap options, click
on either Use Shared Colormap or Use Private Colormap
in the Colormap area.
Colormap Options
Using a Shared Colormap
When you are using a shared colormap, the available colors are
shared among Linux, DOS, and Windows applications.
The number of colors available in your DOS and Windows environment depends on the number of colors available on your display.
It is highly recommended that you use at least a 64K color (16 bit) display. These days display cards that provide at least this number of colors for high resolutions are widely available and are low cost. But if somehow this is not an option, these "colormap" options can be used to help work around the problems that happen when the color selection is limited.
With 16 or 256 color display, the range of colors is severely limited. Windows will try to define its own colors for all the undefined colors in the current colormap, which may leave too few colors available for other X applications.
In order for Windows and other X applications to share the colors on a 256-color display, the number of colors available for Windows to define should be limited to much less than 256.
You can choose one of three levels for this limit: High (129 colors), Medium (69 colors), or Low (20 colors) by selecting High, Medium, or Low in the Colormap area when the Use Shared Colormap option is selected.
You'll have to experiment with color allocation levels to determine the one that is right for your configuration. For the best looking Windows display, use the High setting. If this setting results in other X clients having too few colors to work with, try a lower setting.
Win4Lin has this setting so you can tune your session
to be "color friendly" with other X applications.
Other applications
might not be so friendly:
Some X applications (E.g. Netscape, and some desktop themes)
can grab most of the available color slots and use them for colors that
are not generally useful for other applications.
If you are using 8-bit (256) color display and have a problem with colors
when running a Windows Win4Lin session, try it again when no
other X applications are running that might abuse the limited number
of colors.
Another thing to try is use the "fwin" command that starts up
a Win4Lin session on a private X server on the system console.
(And use the "private colormap" setting as described next.)
This way there is no other X applications that will contend with
for colors.
Using a Private Colormap
When you use a shared colormap when the number of colors is limited, color mappings are not exact and sometimes result in strange or hard-to-see colors in your DOS or Windows window.
If this is a problem, you can select the Use Private Colormap option so that Windows will use its own colors when it runs on the Desktop.
One side effect of using a private colormap is that every time you switch between the Windows window and other windows on your Desktop display, the entire screen flashes as the colormaps are switched. Also, when you are using the Windows window, the rest of the Desktop display may have incorrect colors, and vice versa.
Specifying Windows 3.1 Window Size
Windows 3.1 is no longer supported so this control is not used.
Start Zoomed
Zooming a Win4Lin window causes it take over the console display
hardware for it's own use.
This is the mechanism by which standard VGA 640x480 16 color mode
can be displayed.
Zooming is not supported in Win4Lin. Changing this setting has no effect.
Refer to the description of "zooming" above.
Zooming is not supported in Win4Lin. Changing this setting has no effect.
Autofreezing DOS and Windows Sessions
Selecting the Autofreeze option causes DOS and Windows sessions to be
suspended (if possible) when they do not have X input focus.
On a system that is severely overloaded, this can in some situations
improve overall performance of the system.
Cut, Copy, and Paste Operations
To allow cut, copy, and paste operations between Windows and X applications, select the X Cut & Paste check box. This sets the initial setting for this option for your Win4Lin session. While in a session you can use the Win4Lin menu to turn this capability on and off. Normally you should leave this off, and only enable it while you are actively pasting between a Win4Lin session and an X application.
Note that that this feature makes use of the standard X clipboard cut buffers but many X applications that have a form of copy and paste do not use the standard X clipboard cut buffers. Thus many X application will not work with this feature.
NOTE: If this control is grayed, then this feature is not supported in this version of Win4Lin.
Show Menu displays a Key Properties dialog box that allows you to view or change the Show Menu key setting.
Unzoom Key displays a Key Properties dialog box that allows you to view or change the Unzoom key setting.