>>I'm trying to display some formatted text in a wait window but the variable width font makes this particularly difficult. According to help the font is taken from the system appearance settings. Would there be any way to change these programmaticly and then restore them when done?
>>
>>Or would it just be easier to create a self sizing window to display a variable length message?
>
>Better go for second suggestion.
>You will have more flexibility then.
>Also what will happen if your application bombs before you restore system settings?
>Grrrr!

I was afraid that would be the answer. I have shied away from user defined windows because of the difficulty in getting them formatted the way I want. For example, foxhelp talks about a define window dialog box but gives no clue as to how to launch this dialog. It also talks about define window color pairs but gives almost no help in using them. So if I wanted my little window to look like a tooltip with a yellow background and black text, how would I set the color parameter?

define window wMessage ;
	at wrows()/3, wcols()/2 ;
	size nHeight, nWidth ;
	font "courier new" ,12 ;
	color <what goes here???>
 
activate window wMessage
? cMessage
wait
release windows wMessage 

and how can I explore the available options or define my own?

Thanks Borislav