[Info-vax] The option to the Cobol foreground-color/background-color options

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 8/14/2021 12:00 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 8/14/2021 10:46 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> Den 2021-08-14 kl. 14:43, skrev Jan-Erik Söderholm:
>>> When defining screens using the "screen section" in Cobol,
>>> one can add "foreground-color is n" and "background-color is n".
>>>
>>> Now, the numeric parameter n has valid values between 0 and 7.
>>> But our terminal emulator (and the ANSI/VT ESC sequence standard)
>>> has 16 settings. In our emulator (Extra!) they are 0-15.
>>>
>>> 0="black"
>>> 7="white"
>>> 15="bright white"
>>>
>>> If I try to set the value to 15 I get:
>>>
>>> %COBOL-F-SCRCOLVAL, FOREGROUND-COLOR or BACKGROUND-COLOR clause
>>>    value must be between 0 and 7 inclusive.
>>>
>>> We are looking at options like redefining "colour 7" in Extra!
>>> to be 255,255,255 (pure white) instead of the current 192,192,192
>>> which results in a light grey background.
>>>
>>> I'll ask VSI directly also if this restriction can be expanded
>>> to include all colour options as can be seen here:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Colors
>>> but thought I'd just ask if someone have seen this before
>>> and might have some other solution.
>>
>> I have added one additional request to VSI. An option in the
>> "screen section" that simply disables all colour changing
>> commands from the compiler. Our default colours in the
>> terminal emulator are OK and do not need any changes.
>>
>> Something like:
>>
>> screen section.
>> 01  scrPageHeader blank screen no-color-changes.
>>     02  value "Hello world - Screen section" line 2 column 1.
>>
>> Or something similar...
> 
> So what you're saying is that Cobol knows better than you what the 
> screen colors should be?
> 
> Got to wonder how that survived this long ...

Just note that this is standardized.

<quote>
9.2.7 Color number
Color is one of the attributes that may be specified for screen items. 
For a monochrome terminal, the color
attributes are mapped onto other attributes by the implementor.
A color is selected by specifying the corresponding integer that 
represents the color number. The colors given in
the table are a rough guide only; the exact shade of color will depend 
on the terminal capabilities. For example the
value 6 might be shown as brown, but when HIGHLIGHT is also selected it 
might appear as yellow or the value 0
might be shown as black but when HIGHLIGHT is also selected it might 
appear as gray.
black
blue
green
cyan
red
magenta
brown/yellow
white
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
</quote>

So it should probably be an build option.

Like:

/COLPASS

Color passthrough.

Arne