Win32 Console - Details

Details

The input buffer is a queue where events are stored (from keyboard, mouse etc.). The output buffer is a rectangular grid where characters are stored, together with their attributes. A console window may have several output buffers, only one of which is active (i.e. displayed) for a given moment.

The console window may be displayed as a normal window on the desktop, or may be switched to full screen to use the actual hardware text mode, if a video driver permits a chosen screen size. Unfortunately, the display mode is locked in background intensity mode, thus blinking does not work. Also, the underscore attribute is not available.

Programs may access a Win32 console either via high-level functions (such as ReadConsole and WriteConsole) or via low-level functions (e.g. ReadConsoleInput and WriteConsoleOutput). These high-level functions are more limited than a Win32 GUI; for instance it is not possible for a program to change the color palette, nor is it possible to modify the font used by the console using these functions.

Win32 console applications are often mistaken for MS-DOS applications, especially on Windows 9x and Windows Me. However, a Win32 Console application is, virtually, just a special form of a native Win32 application. Indeed, 32-bit Windows can run MS-DOS programs in Win32 console through the use of the NT Virtual DOS Machine (NTVDM).

In earlier versions of Windows, there was no native support for consoles. Since Windows 3.1 and earlier was merely a graphical interface for MS-DOS, most text applications that ran on earlier Windows versions were actually MS-DOS applications running in "DOS boxes". To simplify the task of porting applications to Windows, early versions of Visual C++ were supplied with QuickWin, a library that implemented basic console functionality inside a regular Window (a similar library for Borland C++ was called EasyWin).