Color configuration is an entirely optional step, and may be skipped without penalty.

Although application programs have the ultimate control over the colors that appear on the screen, for applications that do not assume such control, it is possible to customize a number of aspects of the color display by configuration a color initialization file.

When A-Shell launches, it checks if the file DSK0:INI.CLR[7,0] exists, and if so, processes it. If you update the file, or wish to experiment with different color configurations, you can force a new color initialization file to be processed using the SET.LIT command (SET TERM COLORINI <color init file>).

Example

A typical INI.CLR file is shown below. Note that lines that start with semicolons are ignored (comments). The numbers correspond to the color numbers which may be used in the SET TERM FCOLOR # and SET TERM BCOLOR # commands (or in the TAB(-2,x) and TAB(-3,x) BASIC print statements). Note the embedded comment lines that explain the color numbers and the various statement parameters.

; Color Definition File

; Color legend: 0=blk, 1=wht, 2=blu, 3=mag, 4=red

;        5=yel, 6=grn, 7=cyn

; VUECLR=override?,edit fg,edit bg, command fg,

;        command bg, help fg, help bg,

;         status/info fg,bg

VUECLR=Y,6,0, 5,0, 7,0, 1,0

; EZCLR=override?,text fg,bg, border fg,bg

;         cmd fg,bg, sts fg,bg, help fg,bg,

;         highlight fg,bg, menu fg,bg, brief menu fg,bg

EZCLR=Y, 6,0, 6,0, 5,0, 0,9, 1,3, 3,6, 5,0, 7,0

; INFCLR=override?,display fg,bg, edit fg,bg

;         negative fg,bg, update fg,bg,

;         message fg,bg, original msg line fg,bg, forms fg,bg

INFCLR=Y, 1,0, 5,0, 4,0, 7,0, 5,0, 6,0, 9,0

; MMOCLR=Y,border fg,bg, text fg,bg, arrows fg,bg, prompt fg,bg,

;         status line fg,bg, protected fg,bg

MMOCLR=Y, 6,0, 7,0, 5,0, 5,0, 5,0, 10,0

; SCNCLR=override?,screen text (fg), screen background

; The following sets up magenta on black

SCNCLR=Y,3,0

; SCNSIZ=rows,cols

SCNSIZ=18,60

Most of the lines begin with an "Override?" option. When set to Y, the color scheme defined on that line will override the default color scheme normally used for that function, or the one which a program has specifically asked to use. Setting it to N is nearly the same as commenting out the line entirely, except for situations where no other color scheme had been set up or specified for that function.

You may set any color number to –1 to indicate that it should use the color which happens to be current at the time the function begins. (Setting all of the numbers to –1 will effectively defeat any color changes within the function.) Also note that making the foreground and background numbers in any pair the same effectively makes that text impossible to see. This is generally a very bad idea, except in some isolated cases. For example, some people don’t like the status line information displayed by EZTYP; you can eliminate it by setting the status line pair of the EZCLR line to 0,0 (black on black)