Subj : DOS question (revised)
To   : borland.public.cpp.borlandcpp
From : "Rob C" <robb_christiansen@juno.com>
Date : Sat Jul 12 2003 03:57 pm

I have used powerC (DOS) from Mix software for many years. There 
are two functions in powerC called  readch(); and readattr(); 
which reads the characters and attributes of the  current cursor 
position, which I then take and store in a file. I’m now using 
the DOS (standard)  platform of Borland C++ 5.02 and am asking 
what function(s) I would use to perform this same operation.

It has been suggested I use gettextinfo(); I looked into that. 
It seems to me this would not return the sort of byte by byte 
inforfmation that I’m looking for.

Another suggestion was gettext(); This seems a bit more what I’m 
looking for, although I’m still unclear how I could later access 
the second sub, cell attribute. (In the example, puttext(),
that’s supposed to print out (or recall) the value that 
gettext() earlier read, did not do anything.) And then I have to 
be able to store the row and column position, too.

Following is a code fragment I wrote in powerC to accomplish this task. The computer reads one x/y position each iteration and returns the foreground and background color, as well as the character (if any), at that particular position. I write all this plus the row and column position to a file, which then another function, writescreen(), reads and prints back on the screen.


variables startrow, endrow, startcol, and endcol are the window parameters.

for( row=startrow; row<= endrow; row++ )  /* Save what's there */
    { //289
    for( col=startcol; col<= endcol; col++ )
        { //291
        poscurs( row, col );  //<-- position the cursor and read
        ch = readch();
        attr= readattr();
     
//now I write the info to file 
     SaveScreen( ch, attr, row, col );
        } //291

    } //289

.