I am using the phone-a-friend option first before digging thru the docs... :p

Is there a way i can set the ATE background to a specific color? like when I issue a (-1,0)? Currently i am utilizing a wallpaper that I have created with my desired color but just wondering if there was a more efficient approach - like sending the rgb color codes (in hex or dec) that i want.

Tx

Yes there is! You can use the AG_SETCOLOR TAB command to redefine the RGB colors associated with the palette index numbers. The result is the same as if you went into the Settings > Color dialog and redefined the meaning of the various palette index numbers, but obviously doing it from the host allows you to update and standardize it across all the clients.

Hi Frank,
For what it is worth, I just recently dug through the docs with the same question except for foreground color and couldn't find a way.

Cool thanks for the reply! John - maybe that can help you as well!

Yes, thank you Frank and Jack! Must have not looked as well as I thought Is it possible to accomplish the same thing in the Windows A-Shell environment?

I'm curious how you went about looking in the docs, as Ty and I are frequently struggling with and trying to find a solution to this problem. In the old version of the doc, we focused mainly on the index, but the people behind the new version are convinced that "no one uses indexes anymore" and thus haven't really put much effort into that. Instead, it's supposedly all about the general search (i.e. the way people look for things in general on the Internet.) But when I typed in "color" into the search (magnifying glass icon), the first three hits were all right on target.

Anyway, to answer your question, yes, it works exactly the same was in the Windows A-Shell environment. (The Windows A-Shell client and ATE are practically the same, and even though it may seem roundabout for the app to communicate with Windows A-Shell using ATE TAB(-10,AG_xxx) commands, it works the same way as if the client was on a remote machine running ATE.)

OK, thank you. That is good to know. As for how I was searching, I cannot remember. It very well may have been with the index as I am still accustomed to searching that way from the way the old docs worked.

Don't give up on the index! But it's not as good as it used to be, so you may need to switch back and forth between it and the search when looking for topics like "color" which can be found all over the place. Also when using index, best to click on the letter and scroll through the results, because the index search is kind of dumb in that it will land on the first textual match in the index, even if it's clearly not a significant match.

But in the process of trying this out, I did discover another TAB(-10,AG_xxx) command that may be helpful in this quest: AG_SYSBCLR. It allows you to associate a background palette index number with a Windows UI color without specifying the RGB values. I often use that to set the background 0 to match the standard Windows dialog background, which makes the plain text mode look a little bit less like a 40 year old Wyse 50 terminal. (Although at the same time, you'll probably want to change the standard foreground color from the lime green to something darker and bluer.)

OK, thanks for the advice. I'll make a mental note about using both the index and the search when trying to search in the documentation. Thank you Frank for asking the question as well

Circling back around to this... after all the good pointers on how to set and maintain the font color set i realized I failed to get the answer to the original question!

How do I set the ATE background color to one that might be stored in the ATE pallette!

TIA

Once you change the palette, there's a function to force the equivalent of a File..Save operation to save it. I couldn't remember what it was called though, so, following my own advice above, I tried a couple of searches. "SAVE" wasn't very helpful, but "SETTINGS" was. Clicking on the first hit (MIAMEX Functions by Number), it went right to MX_WINSETTINGS which is what you're looking for.

Sorry - i get that...

How do i get the application to select palette #5 and set that to the ATE background?! If I want a solid red background how do i do that?

For text mode, use tab(-3,5) to establish palette #5 as the background. For GUI controls, you either need to add 64 (flag to override the Windows theme), or specify the RGB value in the bgc param.