Re: NT, ANSI.SYS, and Ada 95

["David C. Hoos, Sr." <david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com>]

Paul Whittington wrote in message <3695BCBC.4B77C8E9@grep.net>...
>Try adding the line
>
>device=%SystemRoot%\system32\ansi.sys
>
>to the file
>
>c:\winnt\system32\config.nt
>
>
>"Russell E. Hixon" wrote:
>>
>> I am using Feldman's book - Ada 95 Problem Solving and Program Design in
an
>> introductory Ada 95 course.  In the book, Feldman includes a package
>> (Screen) which utilizes ansi.sys.  I have not found a way to get this to
>> work in a Windows NT environment.  Any suggestions?
>>
This advice regarding ANSI.SYS on NT is only useful for MS-DOS applications,
which gnat programs compiled under NT are not.  The gnat examples are NT
console applications, and it is possible to write NT GUI applications with
gnat, as well.

The quickest solution is to write a replacement body for Feldman's screen
package to call the subprograms in Jerry Van Dyke's NT_Console package
(8KB Zip) available at http://stad.dsl.nl/~jvandyk/nt_con02.zip

Such a body rewrite might look like:

--::::::::::
--screen.adb
--::::::::::
with Nt_Console;
package body Screen is

  procedure Beep is
  begin
    Nt_Console.Bleep;
  end Beep;

  procedure ClearScreen is
  begin
     Nt_Console.Clear_Screen;
  end ClearScreen;

  procedure MoveCursor (To: in Position) is
  begin
   Nt_Console.Goto_XY
     (X => To.Column,
      Y => To.Row);
  end MoveCursor;

end Screen;

Hope this helps.

David C. Hoos, Sr.