[fpc-pascal] How to get the borders and background color of the Message Box

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

nitinjain wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Looking for guidance on formatting of the attached application Output
> snippet.  I'm having trouble on getting the borders and background color of
> the Message Box to display correctly. Any help will be appreciated. 
> 
> Nitin
> <http://free-pascal-general.1045716.n5.nabble.com/file/n5719375/Application_Snippets.jpg> 

You haven't told us what libraries etc. you eventually settled on, i.e. 
whether you're explicitly drawing the outline or relying on a library to 
do it.

I think you've probably already noticed that spaces that you are 
explicitly outputting are OK, while background resulting from explicit 
text positioning aren't. Also there's an interesting possibility that 
the libraries or OS are ignoring the PC-style line drawing characters at 
some level.

Tomas (and others) know far more about this than I do, but what I'd 
suggest is that you first investigate outputting some PC-style 
box-drawing characters as though they were text: You'll need to find a 
reference for the hex codes. Second, reduce your code to a stand-alone 
example program of no more than 10-15 lines, make sure it compiles, make 
sure that it still exhibits the problem, and post that together with 
details of exactly what compilation options you used and your OS.

And for the avoidance of all doubt, that is exactly what would be 
expected of students when I was doing a university support job, or 
junior programmers in a commercial environment. We're trying to be 
helpful, but we've all got our own problems and priorities.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]