Underwear PALette changer for batches and applications v1.1 Most programs and applications include nowadays a facility for color customizing. Depending on the amount of menus, help infos, bars and others a color reconfiguration can be a lengthy procedure. Fortunately there is another way to circumvent this procedure and change colors on the fly: color palettes. More than that, they colorize the screen far beyond the standard VGA 256 color values. UPAL v1.1 provides 50 instantly accessible color palettes and a palette related set of built-in utilities. Both can be run in command line/batch or menu mode or from within applications. Commands and options  Palette options: UP /? /h Ľ - Help UP M Ľ - Load color chart from command line UP 1-50 Ľ - Change palette UP 0 Ľ - Reset current palette UP Ľ - Change palette(s) in menu/preview mode UP PS + Ľ - Make current Palette Sticky Ŀ UP PS - Ľ - Remove current palette to be reset Ĵ UP PS Ľ - Short help about Utility options: UP B 1-9 Ľ - Set a color border UP B 0 Ľ - Reset current color border UP FontName Ľ - Invoke font BACK BROD EPOC or HERB UP FontName ? Ľ - Short info about the font UP HERB + Ľ - Run font HERB in resident mode UP HERB - Ľ - Reset and remove HERB from memory UP UB text Ľ - Boxed messenger for batches UP L FileName Ľ - Run file lister LIES upon a text file UP PL Ľ - Extract Packing List to file RFP.COM will reset borders, fonts & palettes. Type RFP Ľ for a big help screen. Or use RR.COM, the Reluctant Resetter The Palettes  Color palettes are hard to describe, because they overlay existing colors (this goes for standard grey on black too). Palettes 4, 11 and 28 invoke grey shades, number 22 and 46 have an built-in border (can be overridden with UP B (1-9). 33 and 36 are dimmer, useful for the increasing amount of applications, which make use of extended (non-blinking) colors. Palettes 1-40 are for reasons of compatibility identical with palettes of UP.COM v1.0. Since palettes overlay existing colors may the same palette, which looks great upon on a grey on black screen, result into a blurred color mix when invoked from within an application - and vice versa. To see in advance how the palettes affect regular text mode colors (blinking colors have been reversed to extended ones) load first the color chart from command line UP M or run it in menu/preview mode: UP Ľ ͻ UPAL v1.1  Underwear PALette changer by Josef Braun ߺ Pick a palette from 1-50 Ľ 0 = Reset palette Q = Quit ͼ [ 0][ 1][ 2][ 3[ 4][ 5][ 6][ 7][ 8][ 9][ 10][ 11][ 12][ 13][ 14][ 15] [ 16][ 17][ 18][ 19[ 20][ 21][ 22][ 23][ 24][ 25][ 26][ 27][ 28][ 29][ 30][ 31] [ 32][ 33][ 34][ 35[ 36][ 37][ 38][ 39][ 40][ 41][ 42][ 43][ 44][ 45][ 46][ 47] [ 48][ 49][ 50][ 51[ 52][ 53][ 54][ 55][ 56][ 57][ 58][ 59][ 60][ 61][ 62][ 63] [ 64][ 65][ 66][ 67[ 68][ 69][ 70][ 71][ 72][ 73][ 74][ 75][ 76][ 77][ 78][ 79] [ 80][ 81][ 82][ 83[ 84][ 85][ 86][ 87][ 88][ 89][ 90][ 91][ 92][ 93][ 94][ 95] [ 96][ 97][ 98][ 99[100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111] [112][113][114][115[116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126][127] [128][129][130][131[132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143] [144][145][146][147[148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159] [160][161][162][163[164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175] [176][177][178][179[180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191] [192][193][194][195[196][197][198][199][200][201][202][203][204][205][206][207] [208][209][210][211[212][213][214][215][216][217][218][219][220][221][222][223] [224][225][226][227[228][229][230][231][232][233][234][235][236][237][238][239] [240][241][242][243[244][245][246][247][248][249][250][251][252][253][254][255] Examples: If the main text body of an application is set to grey on blue and the bottom line bright yellow on blue, fields [ 23] and [ 30] indicate changes by a palette. Or: UP.COM's build-in file Lister UP L FileName displays in bright white on cyan. Thus field [ 63] tells you how a palette will change its color. The Utilities  UP B 1-9 invokes up to nine color borders. Some palettes have an already built-in border. UP B 0 resets border. Coming from UNDERWEAR UP.COM contains of course some built-in UMFONTs (BACK, BROD, EPOC, HERB) supporting . Usage: UP FontName The fonts are part the UMFONT14 series. Run UNDIZ.COM for a short description or type UP FontName ? The BACK font is a master of mimicry and always good for a joke: It spells all lower class letters backwards and generates random numbers. Run CHKDSK with and without BACK loaded to see what I mean. UP L FileName invokes file lister LIES, where FileName may include the whole path: UP L F:\MYDOC\YOURDOC\AT_LEAST.TXT UP UB Text prints a boxed and centered message on the screen, thus saving lots of drawing when writing batch files. There are 6 more boxed messenger types (plus utilities to create your own messengers) available in archive UBOX10. Combining various options in batch files requires a minimum of typing and produces eye-catching results. Using UP.COM's memory resident features  Some programs running in text mode and all applications in graphic mode reset current color palette and/or screen font. To avoid resetting of current palette use UP.COM's option PS +/-. This will make current Palette Sticky (load permanently to memory until removed). This procedure will even survive WINDOWS sessions. Example: Invoke palette UP 47 Run G-SAMPLE.COM and the palette is gone. Reenter the palette UP 47 followed by UP PS + and run again G-SAMPLE.COM and the palette will be still active. When done remove the sticky palette from memory UP PS - and reset the screen to normal using either option UP 0 or RFP.COM or RR.COM The usage for running UMFONTs BACKBRODEPOCHERB in resident mode is similar: UP BROD + (load BROD to memory) UP BROD - (remove BROD from memory) When loading first a palette and then a font to memory, the font has to be removed first in order to unload the palette - or vice versa. The old story: Never run these or others resident features from within an application, only from command line and batches. UPAL run from within applications  Plenty of applications allow to run an external program. Since UP.COM pops up in menu mode when no parameter is given, it can be easily installed to run from within apps. Palettes are at their best when it comes to change colors of the text body in ASCII editors and word processors. I use mostly QEDIT and WordPerfect. As a QEDIT user you could add the below line in QCONFIG.DAT and save the macro with QCONFIG.EXE: #f4 MacroBegin GSave Dos 'UP ' Return Now pressing Shift-F4 let's you change anytime QEDITs colors at the fly. Provided ALTP.WPM is a key macro for WP v5.1. Copy ALTP.WPM to the directory where you keep your WP macros and UP.COM to a directory in the command path. Thus pressing ALT-P will pop up UP.COM in menu mode.  UNDIZ.COM let's you peep into 20 newest archives from... () All Writes & Wrongs by Josef Braun