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DVPALET.DOC
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1989-02-06
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The DESQview Palette Program
A. OVERVIEW
EGA cards and VGA cards in EGA emulation at any given time can
display 16 colors out of a palette of 256 possible selections. In
order to achieve a specific "look", many applications that are
designed to run on these displays, modify the palette from the
original 16 color default set by the EGA or VGA BIOS.
When you run a program in DESQview that has modified the palette,
the program will appear in its normal color scheme when it is run
in the foreground. When you hit the DESQview key to switch to
another window, DESQview will shift the palette so that it brings
up its own menu using the palette that was current when DESQview
was started.
The DESQview Palette program, that is included on the DESQview 2.2
diskette, is designed to allow the users to manage the setting of
the EGA and VGA palette while running in DESQview. This has a
possible two-fold purpose: Either to allow you to modify the
palette of DESQview to a selection you particularly like, or to
match the DESQview palette with that of an application you commonly
use so that DESQview will not have to readjust the palette when you
invoke the DESQview menu over an application that has modified the
palette from the BIOS default.
B. OPERATION
1. Palette Bar - When the palette program first comes up, you will
see two rows of 8 colored blocks. These sixteen colors,
represent the currently selected 16 color palette. Using the
Palette Bar, you can make specific modifications to anyone or
all or the 16 standard colors. For example, on some systems,
the low-lit color number 6 appears to be yellow, although IBM
defines this as brown. Using DVPALET, you may be able to
modify the palette to be closer to what IBM defines (or away
from it if you don't particularly like the brown color). Once
you have modified the palette to your liking, you have the
option of saving the changes to a file, so that they can be
reloaded anytime you like (even as the default, when DESQview
comes up).
To operate on the Palette Bar:
a) Move around the palette bar using the right and left arrow
keys.
b) Move the up and down arrows to select the primary color that
you want to add or subtract from.
c) Use the plus and minus keys to add or subtract the amount of
the selected primary color from the current selection on the
Palette Bar.
2. Options
a) Blink Enable - Disables a program's ability to set a
blinking attribute. Characters that would normally blink
are changed to show a highlighted foreground and background.
b) Copy to Hi-Colors - Copies low intensity colors to the high
intensity colors. This effectively eliminates selection of
high-intensity colors. If you select this option and don't
like it, you can restore the highlighted colors by selecting
"Restore" and "Original" from the menu.
c) Restore Palette
1) Original Palette - Sets the palette to the one that was
current at the time the DESQview Palette program was
started.
2) Bios Default Palette - Sets the palette to the default as
defined by the BIOS in your EGA or VGA card. This is the
selection to choose if, in tinkering with the palette,
you get your colors so out of whack you wish to reset the
default. Selecting this option and then saving the
palette to the default file name will reset your video
card's default palette when in DESQview.
3) Windows Compatible - This selection sets DESQview's
palette to the same palette used by Microsoft Windows or
Windows based applications. When this is set, hitting
the DESQview key will not result in a palette change for
the underlying Windows application.
4) GEM Compatible - This selection sets DESQview's palette
to the same palette used by Digital Research's GEM and
GEM applications. When this is set, hitting the DESQview
key will not result in a palette change for the
underlying GEM application.
5) Enhanced Palette - This selection sets the current
palette to a combination the author of the DESQview
Palette found pleasing (at least on his system).
d) Load Palette - Loads a preconfigured palette from a saved
palette file. When you select this item, you are presented
with a field into which you may type a file name. The
default file name is DVSETUP.DV. If the palette is loaded
from the default, the palette that DESQview originally came
up with will be set. By entering the name of a previously
saved palette file, you can load a custom palette you have
created.
e) Save Palette - Allows you to save the current palette.
When you select this item, you are presented with a field
into which you may type a file name. The default file name
is DVSETUP.DV. If the palette is saved to the default, this
palette will be set each time DESQview is started.
Alternate palette sets may be saved under other file names
and loaded with the Load Palette command.
f) Quit - Exits the DESQview Palette program. DESQview will
retain the current palette until you quit DESQview or modify
the palette again.
C. SUGGESTED ENHANCEMENTS
If you have several palette settings that you have configured and
saved into palette files, one enhancement would be to configure a
series of DESQview scripts of macros that automatically loads
these custom palettes. Since the DESQview Palette program does
not make use of the Function keys, the keys F1 through F10 might
be suitable for this purpose.
* * * E N D O F F I L E * * *