A text mode program communicates with the user by only displaying text and possibly a limited set of predefined semi-graphical characters, which allow the drawing of rudimentary boxes around portions of text, either to highlight the content or to simulate widget or control interface objects found in GUI programs. Widget is a general-purpose term, or placeholder name, for any unspecified device, including those that have not yet been invented. ... Look up Control in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... GUI can refer to the following: GUI is short for graphical user interface, a term used to describe a type of interface in computing. ...

An important characteristic of text mode programs is that they assume constant width fonts, where every character has the same width on screen, which allows to easily maintain the vertical alignment when displaying semi-graphical characters. A text mode is implemented with a screen buffer that contains the matrix of characters and their attributes. This buffer is converted by the video controller into a video signal. A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... In mathematics, a matrix (plural matrices) is a rectangular table of numbers or, more generally, a table consisting of abstract quantities that can be added and multiplied. ... An attribute is the following: Generally, an attribute is an abstraction characteristic of an entity In database management, an attribute is a property inherent in an entity or associated with that entity for database purposes. ... Modern graphics cards are extremely complex, power-hungry, and heat dissipating as seen with this Nvidia OEM Geforce 7800-based graphics card that has its own massive cooling solution. ...

Depending on the environment, the screen buffer can be directly addressable. Programs that display output on remote video terminals must issue special control sequences to manipulate the screen buffer. The most popular standards for such control sequences are ANSI and VT100. A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system. ... The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private, non-profit standards organization that produces industrial standards in the United States. ... The VT100 was a video terminal made by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) which became the de facto standard used by terminal emulators. ...

Programs accessing the screen buffer through control sequences may lose synchronization with the actual display, and so many text mode programs have a redisplay everything command, often associated with the Ctrl-L key combination. A Control key (marked Ctrl) on a modern Windows keyboard In computing, a Control key is a key, which when pressed in conjunction with another key, will perform a special operation. ...

The border between text mode and graphical programs can sometimes be fuzzy, especially on the PC's VGA hardware, because many later text mode programs tried to push the model to the extreme by playing with the video controller. For example, they redefined the character set in order to create custom semi-graphical characters, or even created the appearance of a graphical mouse by redefining the appearance of the characters over which the mouse was shown at a given time. Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a computer display standard first marketed in 1987 by IBM. VGA belongs to a family of earlier IBM video standards and largely remains backward compatible with them. ... Modern graphics cards are extremely complex, power-hungry, and heat dissipating as seen with this Nvidia OEM Geforce 7800-based graphics card that has its own massive cooling solution. ...

Many modern programs with a graphical interface simulate the display style of text mode programs, notably when it is important to preserve the vertical alignment of text, e.g., during computer programming.  There exist also software components to emulate text mode, such as terminal emulators or Win32 consoles. For programming in music, see Programming (music). ... This article is about emulation in computer science. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Win32 console is a special type of window within the system of Windows API. A Win32 console has a screen buffer and an input buffer. ...

PC Common Text Modes

Depending on the graphics adapter used, a variety of text modes are available on x86 personal computers. They are listed on the table below: x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ...

Clarification request and warning: If this table refers to text modes (as the title of this page states), listing graphics resolution just as a character generator's property, there is something wrong with the 640×480 modes, because on VGA at 80×25 (video mode 03h) we have 9×16 character matix, thus giving 720×400 dot resolution. I am not sure about 80×50 mode if it uses 8×8 characters or 9×8, but anyway the resulting resolution would be 640×400 or 720×400 — not 640×480! If we are talking about graphics modes, which also have some standard text resolutions, 640×480 mode (video mode 12h) uses 8×16 (or 8×8) characters, so the text grid is 80×30 (80×60), not 80×25.

By far the most common text mode used in DOS environments, and initial Windows consoles, is the default 80 columns by 25 rows, or 80x25, with 16 colors. This mode was available on practically all IBM and compatible personal computers. All 80x25 modes also had a virtual 80x24 mode, used by some applications that needed a status bar on the last row, like terminal emulators. In reality, it was the same 80x25 mode, but restrained by software to make the last row unaccesible. The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), introduced in 1981, was IBMs first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC. The standard IBM CGA graphics card was equipped with 16 kilobytes of video memory. ... The Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) is the IBM PC computer display standard specification located between CGA and VGA in terms of graphics performance (that is, colour and space resolution). ... Video Graphics Array (VGA) is an analog computer display standard first marketed in 1987 by IBM. While it has been obsolete for some time, it was the last graphical standard that the majority of manufacturers decided to follow, making it the lowest common denominator that all PC graphics hardware supports... Big Blue redirects here. ... The virtual is a concept applied in many fields with somewhat differing connotations, and also denotations. ... An example of a status bar A status bar is a component (widget) often found at the bottom of windows in a graphical user interface. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Two other text modes, 80x43 and 80x50, were also available, but were very rarely used. The 40 column text modes were never very popular, and were used only for demonstration purposes or with very old hardware.

See also

• Text user interface
• Text mode demos — computer animations generated in text mode
• Teletext
• ASCII art