[fpc-pascal]several questions

[XHajT03 at mbox.vol.cz]

From:           	DONALD PEDDER <jims_son at jedi.apana.org.au>
To:             	fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
Subject:        	Re: [fpc-pascal]several questions
Send reply to:  	fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
	<mailto:fpc-pascal-request at lists.freepascal.org?subject=subscribe>
	<mailto:fpc-pascal-request at lists.freepascal.org?subject=unsubscribe>
Date sent:      	Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:44:36 +1000 (EST)

> > Probably another 18 files have already been opened by the OS (device
> > drivers etc)
> 
>    I guess that's what's happenning, as when I increased the files it
> worked. It seemed so extravagent that another 18 files would be open
> to run a simple pascal program I didn't even think it worth checking!
> I wonder what all the open files are?

There are tools to find all the open files under DOS and what opened 
them (device drivers, TSRs, etc.); you could probably try to start 
something like that before running your Pascal program, and possibly 
to run it from a test program written in FPC using Dos.Exec to find 
out what exactly gets open by the extender and DPMI server. If you 
need such a tool, I can send it to you (the tool I have is called 
mapfiles.exe, but there are others probably).

> > FPC doesn't use the BIOS functions for drawing text characters in
> > DOS - so the original text attributes should be preserved after
> > exiting for new text.
> 
>    Well, it's not, so I don't know what's going on there. I have some
> other computers and other compilers - I might try some mixing and
> matching to see if it's a problem with a specific computer/compiler
> (when I can find some time for this that is! :-( ).

The reason of your problem is very simple, IMHO. BIOS always uses the 
character attributes of the last character on the row when scrolling 
the screen above to add a new row. If you don't change these 
attributes before ending your program, DOS keeps them.

Tomas