Windows 7

[Kenneth Brody]

On 12/14/2010 3:27 PM, Brian K. White wrote:
> On 12/14/2010 11:13 AM, Kenneth Brody wrote:
>> On 12/14/2010 10:56 AM, Richard Kreiss wrote:
>>> Is there a way to get filepro to open full screen and not in a window on a
>>> machine running Windows 7?
>>
>> Microsoft dropped support for running console apps full screen back in
>> Vista.  The most you can do is make the font as large as possible, without
>> making the window larger than the screen.
>>
>
> "dropped support" is slightly misleading, making it sound impossible to
> get the desired end result. There are a bunch of sort of crappy ways to
> get the desired result or the outward appearance of it.

I don't consider removing the video driver, replacing it with an XP version, 
and hoping for the best, to be a viable "solution".  Or, upgrading to Win 7 
Pro, just so that you can install XP Mode, which may or may not support 
full-screen console applications.

> It's possible for a program to at least appear to do full text screen.
> When I press Alt+Enter in PuTTY it goes full screen with the text going
> right to the edge of the screen and no window borders or task bar
> visible. In reality it's probably implemented like pressing F11 in
> chrome or firefox or setting a video player to full screen, various
> windows things can and do pop up or stay visible unless you tell them to
> go away, but it _looks_ exactly like plain old dos screen.
> If putty can do it, fp could do it in theory, it just wouldn't remain a
> true console app.

You mean it wouldn't be a console app at all.  Yes, PuTTY can go "full 
screen", but only in the sense that it's in a window that takes up all of 
the screen real estate.  It's still in GUI mode, and other programs can 
still draw on the screen.  Yes, it looks like a full-screen console app. 
But, unless you are suggesting that we redo all of filePro I/O to turn it 
into a GUI application, just so that it can "look like" it's full screen, I 
don't see that as a viable solution, either.

I don't know how PuTTY handles screen sizes that are not multiples of 80x25 
(or whatever size its window is set to).

The fact is, Windows Vista has only some support for full-screen console 
apps, and Windows 7 has apparently dropped it entirely.

> Or, if you have Windows 7 Professional or above you can use XP Mode.
> That's a completely terrible and inefficient way to run an app just to
> get that last little bit of screen border to disappear but it is possible.
>
> Or, this article shows no less than three other ways.
> None are very appealing solutions, but they're interesting to know about
> as options.
> http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/27/workaround-to-this-system-does-not-support-full-screen-mode-in-windows-vista/
>
> Since windows can draw text full screen to _appear_ like an old console
> full-screen, seems like it should be possible to make a sort of wrapper
> app that just does nothing but render the console apps screen in a
> regular window, which can then be made full-screen. Not like the dosbox
> thing above which is an OS emulator but just like putty or rxvt from cygwin.

I accept your offer to write that wrapper.

> In fact, it looks like this does almost just that:
> http://code.google.com/p/mintty/downloads/detail?name=mintty-0.9.3-msys.zip
>
> It runs cmd and zooms it full screen, but I doubt it will work for
> filepro since it appears to do more than just render the screen, it's a
> regular terminal emulator, no net connection, but like any other
> terminal emulator it uses ansi/vt key codes which is not what a win32
> console app does.

Hmm...

     Similarly to other pty-based Cygwin terminals, however, mintty is not
     a full replacement for the Windows Command Prompt. While native console
     programs with simple text output are usually fine, interactive programs
     often have problems, although sometimes there are workarounds.

Not to mention that it appears that you need to install Cygwin first, in 
order for it to run.

Seems like a lot of work just to be able to run a console window (though not 
all console apps) "full screen".

But, if you're up to the challenge, take a took at console.sf.net, and add 
the code needed to go "full screen" while keeping the same row/column count. 
  At least that program runs console apps as expected.

> Looks like XP mode, or an XP video driver are your least-bad options.

I would call "use the largest font that still fits 80x25 on the screen" to 
be the "least bad" option.

-- 
Kenneth Brody