Progress
Portability Guide
Windows Environment Settings
When you install Progress on Windows, the installation program automatically places default
progress.ini
information into the registry. Depending upon whichprowin32
parameters you specify for startup, Progress searches for either the registry or theprogress.ini
file. For more information on the registry, see the chapter on maintaining user environments in the Progress Client Deployment Guide .Progress Software recommends that you modify the Windows environment settings by modifying the
progress.ini
file. You can change the default settings and add your own customized sections. Note that after each modification of this file, you must run the INI2REG utility, which placesprogress.ini
information into the registry.The
progress.ini
file contains sections created by Progress for unique purposes. For example, the [Proedit] section is read by the Procedure Editor. Sections are also platform specific. For example, character client executables read information stored only in the [WinChar Startup] section while the Windows graphical client executables read information stored only in the [Startup] section.As installed, the
progress.ini
file contains the following sections:
- [Startup]
- [Colors]
- [Default Window]
NOTE: You can add site-specific fonts to the file. Do not change the first 16 colors; do not change the first 8 fonts. These colors and fonts are reserved for the ADE tools. Changing them could cause the Progress ADE tools to malfunction.- [Fonts] for the Progress Application Development Environment (ADE) tools
- [Proedit]
NOTE: Do not modify information in the Debugger section.- [Debug-Init]
- [WinChar Startup]
- [WinChar Colors]
- [WinChar Default Windows]
NOTE: The [WinChar...] sections are read only by the Windows Character Client.- [WinChar Keys]
When Progress searches for environment settings at startup, it first searches the registry, unless the session started with a startup parameter that told Progress to start searching for an initialization file. Progress then searches for an initialization file in the following places:
This search order fosters deployment flexibility because you can:
Startup Specifications
The [Startup] section specifies the following:
- Terminal-emulation specification
- Display attributes and multi-tasking capabilities
- The default proportional font for alphanumeric data and character fields that do not contain fill characters (such as the parentheses surrounding the area code of a telephone number)
- The default fixed font for integer fields (such as date fields or numeric fields) or for fields with format strings containing fill characters, for example, xxx-xxx, in which the dash (-) is a fill character
- The default font used in updates to fill-in fields in version-specific display mode
For more information on these startup specifications, see the chapter on user-interface environments in the Progress Client Deployment Guide .
Font Specifications in Startup
These are the font settings in the [Startup] and [WinChar Startup] sections:
Available Fonts
There are font table entries for the Progress ADE tools. Progress uses the default system fonts defined in the [Startup] and [WinChar Startup] sections, unless you add additional fonts to the existing font table.
NOTE: Do not change fonts 0 through 7; this could cause the Progress ADE tools to malfunction.Determine which screen fonts exist in your environment and choose fonts by using the Font common dialog box or by viewing the font settings in the registry.
Once you have selected fonts, add them to the font table using the following syntax:
N
An integer that specifies the font table entry.
typeface
A valid typeface name, such as Times or Courier.
point size
The size of the font, in points. If you omit the point size, Progress uses the default point size as defined by the typeface.
keyword
You can optionally specify bold, italic, underline, or strikeout.
For example, add 15 point Times to font table entry 16 as follows, and separate typeface and keyword with a comma:
You can also add fonts to the font table using the following formats:
Your font table can contain up to 256 entries. Each entry in the table performs two semantic functions: it names a font that exists in your environment and it maps that font to an integer from 0 to 255. The integer is the way an application references the font when making a font assignment.
Available Colors
At run time, Progress stores color specifications in a data structure called the color table. The color table is initialized from the [Colors] and [WinChar Colors] sections. There are 16 colors available to an application for use as either foreground or background colors. You can add up to 256 colors.
Each entry in the [Colors] and [WinChar Colors] sections performs two semantic functions: it defines a color by name or RGB value and maps that color to an integer from 0 to 255. The integer is the way an application references the color when making color assignments to a widget.
A color entry has the following syntax:
N
An integer from 0 to 255 that specifies the color table entry.
R
An integer that specifies the amount of red present in the color.
G
An integer that specifies the amount of green present in the color.
B
An integer that specifies the amount of blue present in the color.
color-name
Any of the following color names, mapped to the colors defined on your Windows system:
For example, the following entry specifies red at color table entry 4:
Any entries you add to the color table must be sequential. For example, since the installed environment defines color0 through color15, the next color you add must be color16. If you mistakenly add an entry for color17, Progress ignores it if color16 is undefined.
For backward compatibility, color0 through color15, as installed, are the same as the colors supported in previous versions. See the Progress Programming Handbook for a list of these colors.
Windows Color Palette
Many VGA and Super VGA video cards provide 256-color palettes for the Windows environment. The following restrictions apply to the use of color palettes on Windows:
- Windows reserves 20 palette entries for system use.
- Only one palette can be active at a time. If two applications have 256-color bitmaps, and Application A is active, the image for Application B is most likely rendered incorrectly if it uses a different color palette and runs in the same window session.
- An application’s palette is used when the application is active.
Some video cards provide either HI-COLOR or TRUE-COLOR interfaces for Windows. The HI-COLOR interface provides 65,536 colors, and the TRUE-COLOR interface provides 16,777,216 colors. These two interfaces do not use palettes and therefore do not impose the same restrictions on color use. These are the features provided by these environments:
Windows Color Bitmaps
Progress supports 256-color bitmaps for buttons and images. Each 256-color bitmap has a list of palette entries associated with it. When you display one of these bitmaps in a Progress window, the palette entries are appended to the existing Progress palette.
The following rules and restrictions apply:
- The last 256-color bitmap’s palette used in a Progress window overwrites any previous bitmap palettes within that window.
- Progress Software Corporation recommends that you use only one 256-color bitmap palette per Progress window. This ensures that all of the bitmaps within a Progress window display properly when the window is active. Progress applications that change the color palette might significantly impact performance.
- The current 256-color bitmap palette for a Progress window is activated whenever the window is activated.
- The number of colors that are used from the 256-color bitmap are calculated as follows:
N COLORS = 256 - (RESERVED WIN COLORS) - (Progress CUSTOM COLORS)
NOTE: If you are using bitmaps that do not require 256 colors, build them as 16-color bitmaps. Otherwise, you might experience a loss in performance.- When using PRINT SCREEN or ALT-PRINT SCREEN to capture screens, the bitmap copied to the Clipboard matches the current display resolution. For example, once PRINT SCREEN captures a screen, you can use Paint Brush to cut a 99 x 24 bitmap for use on a Progress button. The resulting disk image is a 256-color bitmap that takes up 3,478 bytes of disk space. The same bitmap, when reduced to the standard 16 colors supplied by Windows, takes up only 1,366 bytes of disk space. There are several shareware and commercial products that can perform these color-reduction operations.
Main Window Defaults
The [Default Window] section of the environment file specifies the following for a Windows application’s default window:
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