Resizing WinAPI Windows Console without text rearranging?

Is there a way to prevent the text displayed in the Windows Console from rearranging when you resize the window?

When you resize the window the text reformats itself to accommodate the new size.

Are there any functions in the Windows API to prevent the text rearranging when you resize the window or when you minimize and then maximize it?

Even with minimize and then maximize the text rearranges.

Thanks!

Maybe using CR LF in text?

It will auto-adjust text in the console window between newlines (or begin newline/newline end) to suit the size of the window. This is a 'feature' of the console. If you have say a width of 80 with a line length of 100 then this will display as 80 chars on one line and 20 on the next. If you adjust the width to say 110, then this line will be displayed as one line of 100. AFAIK, the only way around this is to have lines that are no greater in length than the current width of the screen.

How are you writing to the screen?

I write to the console as follows:

I have an wchar_t* array of 3600 characters.

The console has 120 characters per line and 30 lines (so that's 120 * 30 = 3600).

I fill the character array with a mixture of letters, symbols and spaces as needed.

I then write to the console using WriteConsoleOutputCharacter() function.

I do it this way because it writes to the console very, very quickly and avoids the screen flickering associated with other ways of writing to the console.

The problem is, if the user minimizes the console window, or resizes it, the text that I have carefully arranged is scattered all over the console, ruining the effect.

Ah. You might be able to subclass the console window and trap the WM_SIZE message and ignore it et al. Not tried though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 2kaud

Ah. You might be able to subclass the console window and trap the WM_SIZE message and ignore it et al. Not tried though.

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I'm a beginner.

What do you mean by "subclass the console"?

Just looked into it. Appears you can't sub-class the windows console. Sorry.

Have a look at:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...le-window-in-c

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 2kaud

Just looked into it. Appears you can't sub-class the windows console. Sorry.

Have a look at:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...le-window-in-c

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Yes, I followed this guide. It's quite effective.

I also didnt know you could use

Code:

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~WS_STYLENAME

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in the SetWindowLongA function to REMOVE WS_STYLE messages...

Unfortunately, if the user minimizes the window, it still garbles the output.

I can't really prevent the user minimizing the window, since that's extremely inconvenient for them.

I'll keep looking around. Let me know if you find anything else..(!) :)

SOLUTION


The solution appears to be correct use of the function SetConsoleWindowInfo().

By setting the dimensions of the console to the exact size of the buffer you don't trigger text realignment when you change the shape of the window.

This seems to be the only way to work around the text-realignment feature of the Windows Console.

Thanks for all your help..(!) :)