Window and Full Screen Modes
A Win32 console application may run in two modes.
One mode places the text in a window and uses an operating system's font rendering. In this mode, an application's interaction with user is controlled by the windowing system. This is analogous to X Window applications like xterm.
In a full screen mode Win32 console uses a hardware text mode and uploads a raster font to the video adapter. This is analogous to a text system console. Full screen uses Windows' built-in VGA driver, rather than any installed graphics drivers, unless another driver is VGA-compatible. Therefore, it only supports VGA-compatible text modes, giving it a maximum character resolution of 80 columns by 28 rows. This contrasts with comparable consoles in various other operating systems such as Linux, which are able to display higher resolutions through different drivers.
An application can be instantly switched between these two modes with Alt-↵ Enter key combination. Text environments in Unix-like systems usually do not have such feature.
Read more about this topic: Win32 Console
Famous quotes containing the words window, full, screen and/or modes:
“The knocking out of a pipe can be made almost as important as the smoking of it, especially if there are nervous people in the room. A good, smart knock of a pipe against a tin wastebasket and you will have a neurasthenic out of his chair and into the window sash in no time.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.”
—Alan Bleasdale (b. 1946)
“The screen of supreme good fortune curved his absolute smile into a celestial scream.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Men and women are brothers and sisters; they are not of different species; and what need be obtained to know both, but to allow for different modes of education, for situation and constitution, or perhaps I should rather say, for habits, whether good or bad.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)